"What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
I open with a quote: "Is truth a property of sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other), or is truth a property of propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and timeless entities)? The principal issue is: What is truth?"
https://iep.utm.edu/truth/#H7
Of all the theories featured in the linked source, I find the simplest one most plausible. P is true is just fancy talk for P. This is the 'redundancy' theory.
[quote = link]
It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, 1918)
[/quote]
Why else is this approach attractive ? If true claims can be unwarranted and unwarranted claims can be true, then defining truth in terms of warrant seems unwarranted.
Correspondence, a popular and maybe even default choice, also seems problematic. "The theory says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p, p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact." But is it not cleaner to just understand p as a fact, iff it is true ?
This is a thorny issue, and I hope I've set it up just enough to get a conversation going. Personally I'd especially like to learn more about deflationary approaches, which some posters here seem to know about, and which I haven't studied closely yet.
https://iep.utm.edu/truth/#H7
Of all the theories featured in the linked source, I find the simplest one most plausible. P is true is just fancy talk for P. This is the 'redundancy' theory.
[quote = link]
It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, 1918)
[/quote]
Why else is this approach attractive ? If true claims can be unwarranted and unwarranted claims can be true, then defining truth in terms of warrant seems unwarranted.
Correspondence, a popular and maybe even default choice, also seems problematic. "The theory says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p, p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact." But is it not cleaner to just understand p as a fact, iff it is true ?
This is a thorny issue, and I hope I've set it up just enough to get a conversation going. Personally I'd especially like to learn more about deflationary approaches, which some posters here seem to know about, and which I haven't studied closely yet.
Comments (2779)
What are facts? Names? Things in the world? Both? I still do not know what to do here.
Yes, things like that snow is white.
We use names to refer to individuals.
That's why in first order logic we use a,b,c... for individuals and f,g,h... for predicates and then put these together to make f(a), g(a), h(a,b) and so on...
a,b,c... are names. f(a), g(a), h(a,b) are propositions or statements or sentences - you choose - and so not names.
If f(a), g(a), h(a,b)... happen to be true, then they are facts.
Like that snow is white.
As I mentioned earlier, one definition of "fact" given in many dictionaries is "something that really exists".
It's not that we can't turn sentences into quotation-mark names, it's that such a proposed definition only applies to quotation-mark names, which is insufficient. The correct definition should apply to all true sentences. Again, from his 1933 paper, continuing immediately from the prior quote:
I suggest you read that section of the paper rather than have me quote it piecemeal to you.
Quoting Banno
Then you should probably mention that in your exegesis as it currently reads as if this was Tarski's position and so is misrepresentative.
Let me have a go at paraphrasing what is going on here, with an eye towards our at the least agreeing on that. Tarski has
"Snow is white" is true IFF snow is white.
He is pointing out that one cannot substitute p for (snow is white) in order to obtain
"p" is true IFF p
because the quote marks make the context intensional; 'snow is white' and that snow is white have different extensions. Substitution cannot occur salva veritate. And so on.
Bowdlerising the argument, suppose we call "Snow is white", Fred.
Then we can write
And perform a universal generalisation to get
...which is not what we want.
Do we agree that this is what is going on?
Tarski gets past this for formal languages by developing the mechanism of satisfaction, so that he has extensionally transparent terms on both sides of the equivalence.
Are we happy so far?
My point is only to show you what Tarski said, which is that, to quote him again:
And later:
He quite literally says that the T-schema isn’t a definition of truth and that a definition of truth for our everyday language is impossible. Maybe you and other authors disagree with him, but I’m not here to defend Tarski’s position, only to present it.
The only contribution of my own that I’ve added is that the sentence “this sentence has thirty one letters” appears to be an exception to the rule that “p” is true iff p, and so this disquotational account of truth is deficient. Tarski does pre-empt this, saying in Truth and Proof that, of his formalized language, "demonstrative pronouns and adverbs such as 'this' and 'here' should not occur in the vocabulary of the language", but I'm unsure how other authors who adopt the disquotational account for everyday language resolve the issue.
And in fact earlier you seemed to agree with me on this, saying "it always was [ 'p' is true iff q ]. Putting p on both sides is a special case", showing that "'p' is true iff p" isn't the definition of truth but something which (most of the time, at least) follows from whatever the actual definition is.
Ok. Do you think I have claimed he said otherwise?
I'm now puzzled as to why we are having this conversation.
This is precisely where the problem is, unwarranted attempts such as yours, to reduce the meaning of "a truthful account" to "an accurate portrayal of what happened". We all know, that "to tell the truth" means to state what one honestly believes. Therefore, we should also know, and adhere to the epistemic principle, that "a truthful account" means one's honest opinion. Now if we look at what "one's honest opinion" means, and what "an accurate portrayal of what happened" means, we see a huge gap between these two.
So if we simply assume that "a truthful account" means "an accurate portrayal of what happened" when it could equally mean "one's honest opinion" we have made a very serious mistake which could badly mislead us. And of course, as explained above, the problem is with the assumption that "a truthful account" means "an accurate portrayal of what happened". That one's honest opinion is an accurate portrayal of what happened is something which needs to be justified.
At this point, justification enters the scheme, allowing us to move from "one's honest opinion" to the conclusion of "an accurate portrayal of what happened". But we clearly ought not make this move without justification. Since there is in principle, such a huge gap between those two (ones honest opinion, and an accurate portrayal of what happened), we cannot move from one to the other without justification. To do so would be an irrational leap of faith.
Quoting Janus
This is not "radical skepticism" in any way shape or form. It is a simple reflection on the reality of things. Different people have different descriptions of the same event, very often conflicting. That is commonplace, everyday, and not a statement of radical skepticism. Therefore every "truthful account" ought to be justified before we act on it. Have you never observed the proceedings of a court of law where people are sworn to tell the truth? These are not the proceedings of some sort of radical skepticism, these are the day to day proceedings of people who are working to determine the Truth.
Notice, I say "Truth" here with a capitalized T. That is because this is supposed to be some sort of Divine Truth, independent of human opinion, which we think we might be able to get at, through the process of justifying human truths (honest opinions). However, we of course, being only human, will never achieve that Divine Truth, that perfect, absolutely accurate portrayal of what happened. So, all this talk about "truth" in that sense, what I call "Truth" here (the perfect portrayal), is just pie in the sky nonsense for us lowly human beings.
Quoting Janus
As explained above, this is the purpose of "justification". To properly judge the accounts of other people requires an understanding of justification. These accounts may contain honest mistakes as well as dishonesty, and uncovering these two requires different investigative skills. That is why we cannot simply assume an account is an honest, or truthful account.
Truth rests on meaning - and meaning rests on definition
The Sorites Paradox asks that when on the removal of a single grain a heap becomes a non-heap.
In the dictionary, a "heap" is defined as a "large number of". "Large" is defined as "considerable". "Considerable" is defined as "large". In this case, circular. Does this mean that definitions are unnecessary? Society has determined that it is not necessary that a "heap" be defined within a single grain, as it has, or example, with the metre length, recorded on a bar of platinum - iridium in the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.
The Sorites Paradox is only a paradox because it requires a definition that does not exist. It would be like asking if the proposition "a xyxxy swims in the sea" is true or false before the meaning of "xyxxy" had been defined.
The Sorites Paradox requires the definition "a heap has at least X grains and at most Y grains" without defining the meaning of X and Y.
In Tarski's terms, the proposition " a heap has at least X grains and at most Y grains" is in the object language. The truth or falsity of the proposition may only be proven in the metalanguage, whereby a heap has at least X grains and at most Y grains. Yet the meaning of X and Y has never been defined. Truth can never be proven in the metalanguage until meaning has been defined in the object language.
The Sorites Paradox shows that it is not the case that definitions are unnecessary, rather, that it is only a paradox because it is requiring a definition that doesn't yet exist.
Another consideration; what if we drop the use of the word "false" and replace it with some substantial notion of falsity?
1. This sentence does not correspond to a fact
We can then say:
2. "This sentence does not correspond to a fact" does not correspond to a fact
Is (2) a contradiction that entails that (1) does correspond to a fact? Perhaps you might say that it corresponds to the fact that it doesn't correspond to a fact? But it would seem that that reasoning would have to be said of every sentence that doesn't correspond to a fact, and so falsity itself would be self-defeating according to the correspondence theory of truth. Or if (2) isn't a contradiction then the liar paradox is solved: liar-like sentences do not correspond to a fact. Rather than being contradictions they're redundant, as (2) appears to show.
(And in fact the above applies to the stronger "this sentence is not true" form of the paradox).
Or if we don't like the correspondence theory of truth:
3. "This sentence does not cohere with some specified set of sentences" does not cohere with some specified set of sentences
4. "This sentence has not been proved" has not been proved
5. "This sentence does not warrant assertion" does not warrant assertion
etc.
It's best not to oppose false with true. This is because a true and honest statement may be demonstrated to be unjustifiable (false). So "false" is best presented as unjustifiable, which is not the same as untrue (dishonest).
I think the heap puzzle is a clear enough counterexample to that general assertion.
Meaning rests on, or is, usage: some of it agreed, some controversial. Whether 10 grains constitutes a heap is controversial. But a million grains is an obvious case. And obvious cases and obvious non-cases are sufficient to guide usage, for many words. We don't need a dictionary or manual.
Quoting RussellA
If by definition you now mean threshold or cut-off point, then yes, and I agree. But then it's "only" a paradox because ordinary usage is perfectly meaningful without such definition.
Some of them are sentences, and some of those are true, yes. Meaning, some them are what we choose to point the word "sentence" at, and some of those are what we choose to also point the word "true" at.
Quoting hypericin
What are interpretations? I would say: sentences that help us construe symbols as pointing at things. What would you say?
Interpretations are the meanings we construe from sentences. Meaning is what the sentence points to, not the sentence itself. It is the signified, not the signifier.
Meaning is not something in the world either, it is something in the head (otherwise, how can we make sense of abstractions, lies, or fictions?).
We can express meanings with sentences in one language or another, with body language, with pictures.
Sentence, meaning, worldly referent are all not identical, do you agree?
Hilary Putnam famously claimed that ‘meanings just ain’t in the head’. He meant by this that what our language concepts refer to in the world determines their meaning. He illustrated this with his twin earth experiment.
https://www.quora.com/What-did-Hillary-Putnam-mean-by-meanings-just-aint-in-the-head
Agreed.
Quoting hypericin
It is invented, or pretended, by people using their heads, but that doesn't locate it in the head.
Quoting hypericin
See the link above.
Quoting hypericin
The second is our pretended connection between the first and third.
I'd come across this at some point before, I found it very unconvincing, then and now.
I would say that Putnam is conflating meaning and referent.
The meaning of "the water is cold" is the same on Earth and Twin Earth. We can see this by the fact that it would translate to the same sentences in other languages on both planets.
It just so happens that the worldly referent on Twin Earth is different.
How could the meaning of “the water is cold” be the same in both places if on Twin Earth water is xyz rather than H2O? What if on Twin Earth the word ‘water’ refers something similar to what we think of as fire here on Earth? Would it make sense on Twin Earth to say the water is cold?
If the meaning of "water" was swapped with "fire", then of course the meanings of the sentences would be different. And then the sentence would translate into different foreign sentences on the two worlds.
I don't think so. @Michael grudgingly accepted the very same clarification you continue to reject. I don't know if this is because you also reject truth-makers corresponding to whole sentences. On which the clarification is premised. So do I. Maybe @Michael only accepts them for the sake of argument. So can I. And so you seemed to do here:
Quoting Banno
So I used your word "represents" to clarify
Quoting Banno
as
But whereas @Michael found this manner of clarification too obvious for words, you start critiquing correspondence theory:
Quoting Banno
I wouldn't mind, if you wouldn't keep on equivocating between the factual literature on the right hand side of the T-schema and its worldly subject matter.
Then where is it located?
Wherever we pretend it to be located. In a diagram we might draw an arrow between our depiction of a symbol and our depiction of the corresponding object. We may or may not pretend some corresponding bolt of energy passes between the symbol and object themselves.
But I'm treating meaning as synonymous with reference, and I notice from your discussion with @Joshs that you baulk at that. I think Putnam points out a history of the supposed distinction, through denotation vs connotation, sense vs reference, and others more ancient. And recommends dropping it.
So meaning is both purely imaginary and not in the head, an imaginary lightning bolt from symbol to object which is also the object? This does not strike me as a particularly coherent account.
Quoting bongo fury
Then how does he deal with sentences with no referent? "The cat in the hat" has meaning but no reference in the world. If the meaning of "The cat in the hat" is in your head, then mustn't all meaning be in the head?
I don't see that; it seems to me that the logic in common is simply correspondence of what we say (or not) with some kind of actuality. For me it starts with being able to say meaningful things about experienced and imagined things; without that basic correspondence between saying and seeing/ imagining, we've got nothing. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about that: I'm not going to labour the point.
Why would an honest opinion about, say, what happened not be an accurate account of what happened? Perhaps you could give an example showing how these might diverge.
I don't see how we can proceed here, since to my eye your approach looks incoherent. You repeatedly quote what I have written as if you were citing obvious contradictions, but they are not.
Quoting bongo fury
"Snow is white" is not a fact; it is a sentence. That snow is white is how things are, and so, it is a fact.
Now the bit in the above sentence that I italicised is a string of letters, "snow is white", and it is not dissimilar to the bit I bolded.
I'm emphasising that the very same thing can be marks on a screen, a string of letters, a sentence and a fact.
Do we at least agree on this?
Well, I'm going to just stipulate that names are not facts. The person Luke is not a fact, but that Luke posts on the forum is.
And I don't think I will be alone in doing this.
There are very many reasons for this. Simply put, human beings do not have infallible observational skills. Here's a few of the reasons. We do not pay attention. We do not have superb descriptive skills (knowing the best words to use, etc.). And, we do not have an infallible capacity for memory. If you come to recognize the weaknesses in your own observational capacity, you will come to see that an honest opinion doesn't guarantee an accurate account of what happened. Perhaps though, you believe yourself to be some sort of divine being.
Quoting Janus
I already did give an example, the court of law. Have you ever been in a court of law, and listened to the variance between different peoples' honest account of what happened?
Here's another example which might be easier for you to relate to. My wife and I sometimes will go out to an event. The next day we may discuss what happened at the event. Most times we have conflicting descriptions about various details. Since the two descriptions are both honest opinions, and they directly conflict one another, we can conclude that an honest opinion about what happened is not the same thing as an accurate description of what happened.
I grant that when it comes to extended or complex events people can fail to notice and/or remember things. An honest account in those kinds of cases need not be a completely) true account. But it's not black and white, and the point is that, insofar as one's attention and memory have reliably informed them of some aspects of the event, then an honest account of what is remembered will be an accurate, that is a true, if not a complete, account. I haven't suggested that people are infallible. But the main point is that we think that there is, even if it is not realizable, a true account of all events, and that if someone were to be able to give such an account it would necessarily also be an honest account.
Your logic here is unacceptable induction. If we know that our observational capacity can and does regularly fail us, from time to time, with regard to different aspects, then we cannot conclude that an honest account gives us an accurate account. Even if most times an honest account is an accurate account, we cannot make the conclusion that an honest account is an accurate account. That' is simply the way that inductive reasoning works, exceptions to a proposed rule invalidate the rule.
Therefore we must seek justification for each aspect of each honest (true) account, because without this procedure we will never know where the faults in these honest descriptions lie. Not knowing where the mistakes lie is what happens if we take it for granted that an honest description is an accurate description.
Quoting Janus
Well, some people might believe that, it's an ontological decision. But most of these people are the ones who believe in God. Consider that "a true account" is given in words, or maybe other symbols like mathematical ones. How do you think that there is a "true account" of things which human beings have no understanding of, and have no symbols for, fundamental particles which have not yet been named for example. Obviously there are no human words or symbols for these things which have not yet been apprehended by the human mind, so how could there be a true account of them. Or do you believe that God has words for these things? Then your God supports this notion that there is a true account for all events.
Only if facts are true sentences/statements. If facts are situations, circumstances, states of affairs, or what's happened and/or happening, then the answer is "no", because none of those things are marks on a screen, strings of letters, or sentences.
If there is a mouse behind the tree, then the fact consists of a mouse, a tree, and the spatial relationship between them from some frame of reference/vantage point. That fact is no more a sentence, string of letters, or marks on a screen than the tree, the mouse, or the spatiotemporal relationship is.
Quoting RussellA
Sounds right to me. My granddaughter knew what "there's nothing in there" meant, thus she knew it was false when someone said it about the fridge. Given she was barely able to string two or three words together at the time, it shows us that we can know what some statements/sentences/claims mean long before we're able to vocalize and/or utter them. It also shows us that knowing what a statement means and/or whether or not it is true or false does not always require metacognition and/or doubt that is informed by thinking about our own thought and belief as a subject matter in its own right.
Me either. That each corresponds to and/or is consistent with different facts does not mean that correspondence is not the commonality between them.
That surprises me coming from you.
What are we doing when we talk about belief if not referring to what people believe?
Seems to me that people can believe things that are not true and/or clearly and demonstrably false. Truth cannot be not true and/or demonstrably false. What people believe can. Thus, truth is not equivalent to what people believe.
Sure. Just not the fact which, as a sentence, it represents. Except of course in cases of self-reference: "this sentence has thirty one letters" etc.
The very same thing can be marks on a screen, a string of letters, a noun or noun phrase, and a thing. Just not the thing which, as a noun or noun-phrase, it represents. Except when it is "word" etc.
Now, I happen not to believe that there are such things as facts, which are represented (your word) by whole sentences, analogously to how such things as cats and dogs are represented by names or nouns. But I don't mind discussing or making a diagram about them. For the sake of argument.
You appear to be motivated by a similar scepticism, hence:
Quoting Banno
Surely, a sentence doesn't work like a name? Agreed. Unfortunately you think you have a better idea, but you don't perceive that it involves equivocating, as is borne out by
Quoting Banno
So how did this happen?
Quoting Banno
Yes, but the bolded string and the italicised string both represent (allegedly) a non-linguistic fact. Only the slightly larger string that includes quote and unquote represents a string. So,
Quoting Banno
Yep, why not?
Quoting hypericin
Eh?
Quoting hypericin
See the link above.
(For Goodman's solution. I'm not sure how Putnam deals with it. Good question. :smile: )
Where did I say, "...truth is equivalent to what people believe[?]" When we talk about truth, we are talking about what people believe, or what they believe to be true. Just because someone believes something is true, doesn't make it true. It, obviously, can turn out to be false. So, what I'm saying is that you can't separate true and false from people, and their linguistic forms of life.
Hopefully, this makes it clearer.
Quoting creativesoul
So, what I posted didn't clear it up for you?
If I imagine that there is a dragon on Neptune, that imagining is in my head, not Neptune. Are you claiming that meaning is something like a social reality which is not localized in any one person's head?
Quoting bongo fury
You just claimed that meaning and reference were synonymous.
I'm not sure how your earlier post pertains.
Maybe.
I just think that talking about truth and talking about belief are quite distinct in their focus. There is also a possible unspoken presupposition and/or implication that I'm curious about.
Is your position such that there is no such thing as true belief beyond people and their linguistic forms of life?
Do you deny and/or reject language less true/false belief?
Yes, I do deny it. I don't see how you can have true and false apart from propositional content, which is necessarily linguistic.
Okay. That's the conventional view when it comes to belief as propositional attitude. I agree that propositional content is necessarily linguistic, but I see no reason to agree that all our belief amounts to an attitude towards a proposition which represents that belief such that we take the proposition to be true.
For example, if one believes that a sheet is a sheep(a common cottage industry Gettier example), they do not have an attitude towards the proposition "a sheet is a sheep" such that they take it to be true, but they most certainly believe that that sheet is a sheep.
Imagine the world before humans...
In this world before humans, if it is possible for a mouse to be behind a tree, and it is possible for a language less creature to believe that a mouse is behind a tree, then it is possible for a language less creature to have true belief(assuming the mouse is behind the tree) and/or false belief(assuming the mouse is not).
Saying that talk about true and false amounts to talk about what people believe, is not the same as saying that all belief "amounts to an attitude towards a proposition which represents that belief." As you know, I do believe, along with you, that beliefs in themselves, are not necessarily linguistic. For example, if we are referring to beliefs that dogs have, those beliefs are only true and false for us, not for them. They have no concepts of true and false, their beliefs are completely devoid of propositional content.
The mouse is in a particular state-of-mind, but it's not equivalent to our linguistic states, in particular, our beliefs as statements. So, the mouse is not believing that there is a mouse behind the tree, as you and I might believe. How could it do that without a linguistic framework to work with. It has no concept tree and mouse. If it did, well, maybe we could also infer the concepts true and false to the mouse also. You seem to be imposing linguistic concepts where there are none.
When I refer to beliefs (pre-linguistic beliefs in animals or humans), it's completely devoid of any conceptual framework for them, but not for us, as linguistic users. So, it seems that the tendency is to impose our conceptual framework onto them.
Ah, my mistake. That's very true. This is more interesting.
If we're saying that a dog's belief can be true, we're not necessarily saying that the dog is aware of that. The dog has no language. We agree there. The dog has never used "true" or "false". We agree there. The dog's belief is completely devoid of propositional content. We agree there. Our account of the dog's belief consists of propositional content. I strongly suspect we agree there as well.
My post prior to this one begins to address how true and false belief could exist in their entirety prior to the concepts of "true" and "false". I'm curious to get your take on that. I see that you have in the meantime while I was writing this...
Part of the problem is in separating those concepts that have an ontology that is separate from language, and yet part of language; and, those concepts that have an ontology that are strictly linguistic, viz., concepts like true and false. So, concepts like belief, moon, tree, etc., have an ontology that involves extra-linguistic things, but other concepts are strictly linguistic. Part of the problem is placing strictly linguistic concepts in a non-linguistic environment. I think this would be an interesting study.
That's the question, right?
How could a language less creature believe that a mouse is behind a tree if it has no linguistic concepts?
Indeed, it is. It is also quite common to conflate our reports of another creature's belief with the other creature's belief. I do not do that. Our report consists of propositional content. A language less creatures' belief cannot.
Yes, yes, and yes...
That's much what I was getting at in the world before humans example...
Try this
https://fdocuments.in/document/goodman-likeness.html
Some of my intuitions run the other way, but it's a messy area for sure. Research into the cognitive states of pre-linguistic children and animals is bound to be more difficult and less conclusive.
But I'm a little surprised to see you say, quite definitely, no concepts here, no conceptual framework whatsoever. It sounds like you take this to be true by definition and I wonder why. Is it all about language? Or about what enables language? What's the story here?
I'll give an example. Infants, I understand, have a sense of object permanence before they have a sense of object identity. If a toy is moved across their field of vision, passes behind a screen, and comes out as something else, that doesn't bother baby. If it doesn't come out at all, that does.
There's something in the ballpark of the conceptual going on there, I'd say, but what exactly, it's complicated.
First, I take it that concepts, are necessarily linguistic, unless you can demonstrate how they're not. Maybe you can have a wider definition of concept, such that it doesn't include language, but if you did that it would just be a matter of what kinds of concepts we're referring to in each of the arguments.
How would this be about concepts, as opposed to their brain's relationship to a moving object?
That's an interesting way to put it.
I'm not sure how to debate whether concepts are linguistic, but in the meantime I'm just curious why you would take such a strong position. Are concepts by definition linguistic? Or do you think they're just obviously linguistic?
Can you give me a thumbnail of your thinking here?
It's always, already interpreted.
Quoting Davidson
If he's not, I am.
I agree. But meaning then must be distinguished from interpretation, which is in the head.
I see four distinct components to a sentence:
1: The symbols themselves: The sounds or markings.
2: The meaning of the symbols: This is determined by language rules and context, and may be more or less ambiguous. This is not in the listener's or reader's head.
3: The interpretation: this is the mental schema the listener or reader conjures up, using the language rules and context as best they can, attempting to match the meaning.
4: The referent: The object in the world, the phenomena, or the abstract idea the sentence is referring to.
Sentences are just tools used to induce thoughts in others (or represent thoughts to ourselves, when thinking). It is the thoughts themselves which are true and false. A sentence is true if, when interpreted correctly, it induces true thoughts.
This is helpful because it removes the ambiguity of language which otherwise confounds the concept of truth, when truth or falsehood is applied to sentences themselves.
My correction:
1) The symbols themselves are not concept-independent, as if sounds or markings were not already interpretive meanings.
2)The meaning of symbols can’t be divorced from its interpretation by an individual in a given context.
3)Interpretation doesnt just compare itself to an extant set of rules for meaning. It is the only place where meaning actually arises.
4) We can’t speak of objects in the world outside of the objects that we form through our conceptual interpretations
But there seems to be an inconsistency in that you agreed "meaning is something like a social reality" then recanted with "Sentences are just tools used to induce thoughts in others".
Which is it to be?
Not inconsistent, I didn't recant. Sentences, whose meanings are something like social realities, are tools used to induce thoughts in others.
1) Are you speaking of the difference between the physical markings and their interpretation as letters or phonemes? I agree, this should be distinguished.
2) No, it is absolutely divorced. You can see this by looking at an incompetent language user. A poor English user might understand "Water is wet" to mean water is slippery. This interpretation does not impact the meaning of the sentence, which remains water is wet
3) Languages users don't just compare, they have to actively construct an interpretation. As above, this construction is distinct from the meaning of the sentence.
4) But then, cf. the Twin Earth you cited to me.
Meh. Looks like vacillation.
No, meaning is social. It is stable whatever or whether we think of it.
Interpretation is what is in the head.
You've lost me. Or perhaps i wasn't with you to start with.
I'm not quite sure what to say to this.
(Yes, I believe the original experiment was looking for rudimentary physics-related expectations among infants -- that something moving along that way will continue to do so, and it turns out as long as something does, even a different something, they appear to be satisfied.)
What I'm unsure about is the implication that concepts don't have to do with the brain's relationship, as you put it, to objects. I mean, sure, "mind" is probably a much better starting point, but you went with brain, so brain it is. Is that not more or less exactly where we expect to find concepts?
Maybe not, if you think the social is being given short shrift here. But then are we going to say that societies have concepts but individuals, even individual members of societies, don't? That sounds terribly odd. So if the social demands to be brought in, how exactly? And is the social, shall we say, aspect entirely linguistic?
Quoting Sam26
Well, this was part of my question, whether experiments were relevant to your position, or whether you understood concepts to be inherently linguistic phenomena in some sense. So are you saying that this is an empirical question after all?
One example I like to use is the fire example. A language less creature, including but not limited to prelinguistic humans, can learn that touching fire causes pain without having a clue how to say, "touching fire causes pain", and without ever having an attitude towards that proposition such that they take it to be true. How can this be the case if believing that touching fire causes pain requires linguistic concepts?
Well, quite simply... it can't be if such belief requires linguistic concepts! Yet language less creature can and do learn and/or believe that touching fire causes pain. We can watch it happen. So, the only conclusion to draw here is that belief that touching fire causes pain does not require language or linguistic concepts. The difficulty in sensibly discussing and/or setting out language less belief is had in what the SEP characterized as...
...which I've recently found to be no problem at all. Although, I do reject the notion of 'mental lives' as a proper characterization of thought and belief. The belief emerges by virtue of the creature drawing correlations between the fire, the touching, and the subsequent pain they feel afterwards. There is nothing here that requires language, aside from our account of what happened. The fire, the touching, the subsequent pain, and the correlations drawn between those things(and others) are all existentially independent of language. That's what the belief consists of:The fire, the touching, the pain, and the correlations drawn between.
Belief that touching fire causes pain consists of the behaviour, the fire, the pain, and a creature capable of performing the behaviour as well as drawing the correlations between the aforementioned things. It is existentially dependent upon all of this. There is no need for language.
We can perform the same analysis with the belief that a mouse is behind the tree, as shown earlier in this thread as well as several others. The debate between Banno and myself also used that example in my opening statements about the content of belief.
There's no need for concepts here.
A 'sense' of object permanence or an expectation(belief that something will come out the other side)?
I would go with the latter in that case. There is something similar to the conceptual going on there, but if the situation can be effectively/affectively exhausted without invoking the historically problematic notion of "concept" the better off we are.
This discussion of language less creatures' belief directly pertains to the topic of truth, because if it is the case that a language less creature is capable of forming, having, and/or holding true and/or false belief, then it only follows that either true belief does not require truth, or truth exists prior to language. We can take this even further and surmise that some language less creatures are capable of forming, having, and/or holding meaningful true belief. It follows that either meaning exists prior to language, or belief need not be meaningful to the believing creature. The latter is absurd.
So, one stumbling block seems to be the position you hold about notions of true and false. You've expressed concerns, and rightfully so, about the difficulties inherent to any attempts to sensibly attribute the terms "true" and "false" to language less belief as a result of true and false being strictly linguistic notions. See if I can ease this difficulty...
Notions/concepts of "tree" are existentially dependent upon language. What we pick out with those notions/concepts is not. Trees are not existentially dependent upon language. Much the same holds good for the notions of "true" and "false" as they pertain to language less thought and belief...
There can be no question that all notions/concepts of "true" and "false" are linguistic, if by that I mean that those notions are existentially dependent upon language use. However, and this is key, what those notions pick out to the exclusion of all else is no more existentially dependent upon language than trees are. We use "trees" to pick out the things in my front yard. We use "true" and "false" to pick out things(belief in this case) that are consistent with and/or correspond to fact.
If there is a mouse behind the tree, then the fact consists of a mouse, a tree, and the spatial relationship between them from some frame of reference/vantage point. That fact is no more a sentence, string of letters, or marks on a screen than the tree, the mouse, or the spatiotemporal relationship is. If there is a creature, say a cat, that is capable of believing that that mouse went behind that tree, and the mouse is behind the tree, then that creature's belief is consistent with and/or corresponds to fact. The tree, the mouse, and the relationship between them are all meaningful to the cat as a result of the correlations drawn between them by the cat's biological machinery. They become meaningful by virtue of this process(drawing correlations).
That's a not too rough and ready outline/model of what meaningful language less thought and/or belief consists of and/or how it emerges onto the world stage. It's amenable to evolutionary progression as well as being commensurate with supervenience.
A fraught notion...
I'm speaking about linguistic concepts, but you seem to be suggesting a broader sense (thoughts, ideas, etc, - I'm just guessing, since you didn't say). Concepts like true and false, and what we mean by true and false, develop in social contexts, not in isolation. The relationship between language and the mind/brain is something we don't fully understand. We obviously have our intuitions and opinions, but that's as far as it goes. I would say, as per the context of this thread, that true and false are necessarily not part of the conceptual framework of non-linguistic animals.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wouldn't say, "societies have concepts but individuals, even individual members of societies, don't?" - I would say individuals learn to use linguistic concepts in social contexts, so individuals have linguistic concepts only in so far as they acquire them socially. This gets back to the private language argument.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm saying that there maybe some experiment that shows what part of the brain lights up while using linguistic concepts, as opposed to what happens when being shown objects apart from a linguistic context. These kinds of experiments aren't going to answer the question of what we mean by concepts like true and false. So, in the context of what I'm referring to, some experiment, at least as far as I understand, isn't going to answer a question of meaning and use. Of course it depends on what you're looking for.
I would word it slightly different, the concept tree, includes the notion of something existentially separate from language. Whereas the notion of true and false seems dependent on linguistic content in an important sense. In other words, I can imagine a dog seeing a tree apart from language, but not a dog observing true and false apart from the application of these concepts within our linguistic framework. This can be a bit confusing, because when we talk about true and false, we often refer to objects (i.e., facts) that we observe, although not always (referring to facts as abstract objects).
There is definitely much more to say, and I'm sure we're not going to see eye to eye on some of this.
Sorry I didn't respond to all of your posts. I have a difficult time sitting for hours responding. So, I tend to take long breaks (sometime hours, days, weeks at a time). I find that social media can be a bit taxing, and in some ways unhealthy.
Yes if we agree to clarify that the string without quotes is what we're calling a sentence, while the string with quotes is a name facilitating talk about the smaller string (the calling it a sentence).
Quoting Banno
Yes if we agree to clarify that the string itself is not what we're calling a fact, at least, it is not the fact which, as a sentence, it represents. That would be as silly as confusing the name "Fido" with the dog which, as a name, it represents. The string is a sentence, representing or corresponding to the fact.
Quoting Banno
If the bolded bit is the bolded string, and slipping something else in between that and the white snow is choosing to distinguish the two, I enthusiastically plead guilty.
Your link is not entirely supportive of your claims:
Quoting SEP article on Facts
I have appealed to dictionary definitions and ordinary language use. This article mentions my use, but it also states that they are using terms which are contrary to the "usual concept" of truthmaking and the "usual notion" of representation. Wittgenstein teaches us to look to common usage for meaning, so I don't think I'm alone in my use of the term "fact" either.
Saying "it is true" in this case is indeed redundant. But this is a simplistic example; actually a commonplace. Like "It is true for you what it is true for you".
Truth, however, is a complex and multifaceted concept and term. That's why it reigns in philosophy since ever!
From my point of view, there's no such a thing as an absolute, objective truth. The closest to that is a commonly accepted, agreed upon truth. Most people believe --i.e. it is a common truth among them-- that moon landing is a fact, true. However, there are some people who don't, but instead believe in conspiracy theories about the subject. But, based on facts and proofs in general, as well as on reason and cohesion, we can safely say that moon landing is a fat, i.e. true.
This "process" is maybe more clear in court cases, where different "truths" --both genuine and false, supported or not by facts and argumentation-- are presented, in favor and against the accused, It is the prevailing one that, according to the jury or just the judge, determines in a court whether the accused is innocent or guilty. And sometimes, it cannot be obtained.
Besides, if Jesus was as wise as he has been portrayed, I doubt if he had said such a thing, and if so, we don't know how it meant. I believe it's most probably a fabrication by John, like many other.
For sure. I'm with you on that last bit. As it pertains to the rest...
What I offered in the previous couple of posts was where I thought our views were a bit different. Upon rereading, I also realized that I did not properly quantify my examples. What I mean is that the example given was about how true and false belief, and thus truth(and meaning) can exist without language. But that example(language less thought and belief) does not touch upon any of the cases where the notions of "true" and "false" are used to talk about things that are not independent of language. Those cases far exceed in sheer number alone the language less ones, in both the literature and common practice.
Be well until next time!
:up:
Yeah, it is. I am not alone in rejecting the notion that a fact is what makes a true proposition true. Rather it would be better to say that facts just are true propositions.
Quoting Facts as propositions
This, incidentally, looks to be much the same disagreement as I have with
I never said that you were; I said that I wasn’t alone in my view either.
Quoting IEP article on Truth.
Therefore, I am not alone in rejecting your “stipulation”.
That bit.
Quoting IEP article on Truth
A shame that the Children's Encyclopaedia of Philosophy does not provide adequate references. That might be an argument worth addressing if it were filled out. What is it for snow to be a constituent of the fact that snow is white? Facts have parts?
I don't believe my views expressed with Creative leads to this conclusion. What in particular leads you to think this? I think you've expressed this before, but I think it's a misinterpretation of what I'm saying.
As I already pointed out in the SEP article:
Quoting Luke
In case you missed it again, facts are what make propositions true, and - it is usually assumed - the existence of a thing is what makes a proposition true. Therefore, the existence of a thing is, or can be, a fact.
Here's the point at issue:
I take the latter, you the former, views. I ask what it is for snow to be a constituent of the fact that snow is white, and you reply by repeating that facts make propositions true.
Not seeing a point here.
I get that. True and False are concepts we might naturally think of as applying to linguistic artifacts, so in that sense at least they're "linguistic concepts".
True is funny though.
If I ask someone whether they thought what you said was clever, I'm expressing an interest in what you said and how you said it, among other things. If I ask someone whether they thought what you said was true -- I might be investigating your character, or I might be very interested in the state of the world suggested by what you said. (Are the barbarians really within the walls?) Not so much in your phrasing or diction or use of periphrasis.
So even as it seems to apply to linguistic artifacts, True is a somewhat odd duck. Not alone, though. Many such usages come to mind, especially 'modal' adjectives like ”probable", "likely", "impossible", and so on.
Anyhow, I don't have any particular agenda here. Was just curious what you were thinking.
That's why we should look at the meanings of these concepts in terms of use (social linguistic constructs), and in terms of Wittgenstein's family resemblance idea. It gives us a much better picture of what meaning amounts to.
Facts are what make a proposition true or account for the truth of a proposition.
The existence of a thing can account for the truth of a proposition.
Therefore, the existence of a thing can be a fact.
Well, no. Rather according to the SEP article, one view is that facts are what make a proposition true.
There are other views, also addressed in the article.
And yes, the existence of a thing can be a fact. But this is not dependent on which of the competing views one choses.
So if true propositions are facts, then "The Queen exists" is a fact.
But your contention, the one with which I disagreed, was that an individual can be a fact. The Queen is not a fact.
Trivial stuff.
What an odd response.
After I give examples with the intent of showing the difference between being interested in someone's words, on the one hand, and what they're talking about, on the other, you suggest it will all be clearer to me if I focus on how people use words.
No need to turn this into another Wittgenstein thread, though...
Just so that I can understand how this "view" works, can you explain how you would distinguish between a proposition which is a fact, and a proposition which is a falsity. Please don't say something like the proposition "p" is true iff p, or I'll accuse you of being dishonest again. That's because '"p" is true iff p', is a statement which relates the proposition referred to by "p" to the fact referred to with p, which is what you just rejected.
Actually, I asked you why an individual cannot be a fact. You didn’t answer this question and instead responded by stipulating that names are not facts. My initial contention with which you disagreed was that a river is a fact. I’m not sure what you mean by “an individual” or why you say the Queen cannot be a fact. Is a river an individual? If the existence of a river makes a proposition true or accounts for the truth of a proposition, then it is a fact - at least, according to one view of facts.
Quoting Banno
Your original contention was that a river cannot be a fact. You did not qualify that this is only according to your own view. If you now acknowledge that the existence of a river can make a proposition true according to one view, then you were wrong to say that a river cannot be a fact.
The only thing odd, is that you didn't see the connection between my reply and your response.
Ok, a river is not a fact. That a river exists might be.
In much the same way that a name is not a sentence. Or an individual is not a state of affairs.
That has little, if anything, to do with whether facts are true propositions.
At first I thought you might have been making a subtle point, Now I am thinking you have made a trivial error.
Quoting SEP: Facts
See the bit in bold? Are you claiming it is wrong?
So non-existent rivers are not facts? I might agree with you there.
If the existence of a river accounts for the truth of a proposition (e.g. “this river contains many fish”), then it is a fact.
Just as the existence of snow accounts for the truth of “snow is white”.
No, but I don’t agree with everything that “philosophers like to say”. And, as I have already pointed out, the article gives a passing mention to some opposing views. Your claim that existing things are not facts - on any view - remains wrong.
IS there anyone you can cite who thinks that an individual is a fact? Is there any mention of this theory in the SEP article? Does anyone else agree with you?
Otherwise, we might do well to stick to distinguishing between facts and individuals. Facts are about individuals.
No, you are not. The correspondence theory is not the theory that facts are individuals, nor that facts can be individuals, or anything of the sort.
Thanks. I think we are done here.
Once again, the correspondence view is that facts are what account for the truth of propositions. Do you deny that the factual existence of snow accounts for the truth of the proposition “snow is white” according to this view?
And you still haven’t told me what you mean by an “individual”.
Not so odd. I miss a lot. Can you fill it in a little for me?
Quoting Pie
...or not a property? The merits, or lack thereof, of the prosentential view remain undiscussed.
We do seem to treat truth as a property, at least in that we predicate it to propositions.
Has anyone worked through these ideas?
FWIW, I liked what I saw of the prosentential theory, maybe a few years ago on IEP. It has a linguistic feel to it, and provides reasonable motivation for the existence and usefulness of what sometimes appears to be a superfluous word. (The model-theoretic approach more or less shows it to be unnecessary, so much so that Dummett commented that if you didn't already know what truth was, you'd have no idea what you were defining with all those T-schemas and what the point of it could possibly be.) I keep it in the back of my mind when constructing examples.
Blocks the Liar, as I recall, and if that matters.
R v ~ R is true. Does R v ~R correspond to anything? Tautologies like R v ~R are true by force of logic alone, it matters not whether it's actually raining or not. :chin:
As you like. R v ~R happily corresponds to the fact of it raining, just as R v X, for any X does. Likewise for corresponding to it not raining.
On the other hand, a tautology is uninformative. It says nothing, and saying it commits one to nothing. It's not entirely unnatural to defend correspondence but restrict it to informative claims.
It corresponds to the fact that it is never, at the same place and time, both raining and not raining.
Ok. I stand corrected. However there's got to be a statement that's true without corresponding to anything, either partially or wholly, oui? I can't think of one though.
A true proposition that does not appear to correspond to anything.
Quoting Janus
That'd be ~(R & ~R). Not the same. Unless you are Meta.
If you are right and (R v ~ R) is true but does not correspond to a fact, then it puts paid to correspondence.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
R has the same truth value as (R v X), by OR introduction.
But (~R v R) does not have the same truth value as (R v X), which would be false if it were not raining and X were false.
Not so much because that's not an exclusive or. You're talking about something else.
Here's something for you. Was thinking about 'modal' adjectives after my exchange with @Sam26, and it's curious how it's not at all tempting to treat them as properties of sentences (or propositions, whatever).
(1) Sheila says you sent that email. Is that true?
Maybe true is "true of" or "applies to" the sentence Sheila said.
(2) Is it at least possible that you sent that email?
No one wonders if the sentence Sheila said is possible. She's already said it.
Obvious candidates are (a) that "possible" is short for "possibly true" and (b) that we're not talking about the sentence but the state of affairs the sentence describes. (2) and (b) seem to get along fine, but we could have a better match for (a) with something like
(2') Is it at least possible that what Sheila said is true?
which you could continue to interpret as Sheila's sentence maybe possessing this property.
There are ways in which constructions involving "true" and the modal adjectives diverge, but also quite a few where they are very close.
(3) Is what Sheila said true?
(4) Is what Sheila said possible?
(5) No, it's not true because it's impossible.
That last one is a doozy because if you want to take to take "it" as what Sheila said, you can't take both "true" and "impossible" as properties a sentence might have -- that would be nonsense. It doesn't rule out truth as a property but you need a nuanced expansion of (5) into logical form to allow it. (Maybe the second "it" is impersonal, etc. etc.) Not a huge hurdle, maybe, but you have to wonder why ordinary usage would lean toward sometimes treating these so similarly if they're so different.
(6) It's not only possible, it's true.
And if we decide to cut through all this by taking, say, "possible" as meaning "possibly true", there's the peculiarity that these modal adverbs (now) contrast with
(6') It's not only possibly true, it's
Of course we, knowers of systems modal, will be tempted to say this is also
(6'') It's not only possibly true, it's actually true.
To a normal person, "actually true" will sound a bit like "really pregnant" or "completely off".
Anyhow, once we've added "true" everywhere, what's it doing? It's no longer part of the contrast with "possible". But we can't move on to saying that "true" is short for "actually true" because that would completely undermine our treatment of "possible", "impossible" and the others.
I don't mind resorting to Philenglish ("It is the case that ..." "It is possibly the case that ...") and the formal systems are what they are. I was just wondering if we might learn something from how ordinary usage handles things, and I think I've learned that there is some kind of relationship between truth and the various alethic modes, but the picture is far from clear.
Quoting Banno
Agreed, which is why I mentioned that R v ~R will also correspond with it not raining.
Yeah that's it, except partial is full for a disjunction. "Or" means "or", for realsies.
What about the coherence theory of truth?
1. If p then q
2. p
3. q [1, 2 MP]
4. If p then ~r
5. ~r [2, 4 MP]
6. q & ~r [3, 5 Conj]
q and ~r cohere (they're consistent) and so are true w.r.t each other. Lies among which number the white lies (gennaion pseudos) depend not on correspondence (impossible) but on coherence (consistency in re other lies - web of deceit, lies beget lies). Clearly correspondence theory of truth is not the only game in town; plus what about maya (the world as an illusion) and the Cartesian deus deceptor? Consistency aka coherence (theory of truth) is all we can hope for (at the moment).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Isn't it?
One analysis (I think it's Davidson, again) of "Sheila says you sent that email" is
i) You sent that email.
and
ii) Shiela said that (i) is true
And no one wonders if "Is that true?" is asking about (ii).
"Is it at least possible that you sent that email?"
might be
2") Is it true that in some possible worlds, (i) is true?
And here you have an opaque context:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
We might reinstall the extensional transparency with
3') Is (i) true?
4') Is (i) possible?
which at least superficially predicate to (i).
Dangerous ideas like this should come with a warning label!
Quoting Banno
That's right, my hasty bad; it corresponds to the fact that at any place and time it is always either raining or not raining, which amounts to much the same thing.
Davidson, On saying that, uses this strategy to deal with indirect discourse.
Now that article is about propositional attitudes, yet I hadn't given it much attention. But propositional attitudes feed in to the discussion between @Sam26 and @creativesoul. SO might need to reread it.
Article Source.
This seems to have the odd result that the sentence "it is raining or it is not raining" is true because it corresponds to anywhere.
And here I am again at a loss to say what that correspondence amounts to. "it is raining or it is not raining" does not seem to mean "anywhere".
It corresponds to the fact that it is always either raining or not raining at any place and time; shortening that to just "anywhere" which says nothing about time or raining is misleading.
But "Its raining, or it isn't" says nothing about time or place. It still seems odd to insist that it does, clandestinely.
If it is to be true "it's raining, or it isn't" implicitly references time and place, since it can be raining at one place and/ or time and not raining at another place and/or time at either the same place or time (but not both, obviously). The same applies to "it's not (raining and not-raining)".
But that's not right. (R v ~ R) is never untrue. time and place are irrelevant.
All that's fine -- I think, I didn't check all that carefully -- but again look where you end up, contrasting
(1) Is P true?
(2) Is P possible?
Why are those constructions so similar, and why would it be so natural to contrast the truth of P with the possibility of P, the likelihood of P, and so on?
The intensional revolution in fact sweeps away truth along with possibility, necessity and the rest, and leaves a purely extensional model-theoretic semantics behind. ("True" turns out to be an incomplete symbol, completed as "true at W", which is in turn just defined as satisfaction, and everything is just shorthand for that.)
Which is just more evidence, in a screwy way, that this is the set of concepts truth belongs with -- which is a little surprising, since the stability of truth is nearly what defines the split between extensional and intensional contexts. If truth belongs with this stuff, something isn't what we thought it was.
Quoting Banno
The way I was thinking about this: on each occasion when R v ~R is true, it's because R is true or because ~R is true. We additionally know that this covers all possible occasions, but what makes it true on each occasion is specifically one or specifically the other, not the additional fact that there are no occasions not covered by one disjunct or the other.
R v ~R doesn't need to know it's guaranteed to win in order to win; as far as it knows, it's just always lucky.
It can't be luck if whatever sentence we stick in (pv~p) gets us truth. It's structure, not correspondence.
I don't think so. Truth gets on quite satisfactorily in extensional circumstances.
For "it is raining" (R) to be true, we have to go out and verify or, if you're Sherlock Holmes, you can infer it from wet shoes. The same goes for "it is not raining" (~R). [Correspondence check]
However, "it is raining or it is not raining" (R v ~ R) is true and doesn't require us to go out and verify anything at all. [No Correspondence check]
This has to mean something, oui?
So you would have "it's raining or it's not raining" parsed as (r ?~r).
That still get you a tautology,
and so it's true without regard to location. The contents of R are irrelevant. Hence what R coresponds to is irrelevant.
Nuh. It can rain without you noticing.
:snicker: Think of a universe with only me in it.
Don't fall to the idealist error of thinking truth is dependent on you. Down that path lies solipsism.
It could still rain without you noticing.
Perhaps in Spain, on the plain.
I agree with you that it's always true if the "or" is not considered as exclusive and as implying "either raining or not raining, but not both", but it should have been clear to you, if you were paying attention, that I already acknowledged that.
Also, why don't you save time by answering questions posed to you in plain English?
It's just as true for XOR.
Solid copy!
What does that mean in English? If it means "raining or not raining, but not both" then it is not always true, but more likely always false, because it is mostly always both raining and not raining on Earth, depending on time and location. You'll need an argument to convince me otherwise; dogmatic pronouncements are not going to cut it, matey.
Put that one in the schema...
In the back of my mind I'm thinking of the intuitionist's rejection of p v ~p as an unqualified introduction rule. To introduce p v ~p, you have to have p in hand, or ~p in hand, and use the usual rule for or introduction. I simply allowed the introduction but applied the idea to truthmakers: one or the other of those will be what makes the disjunction true when it's true. The disjunction itself is a freebie, vouched for by whichever of the disjuncts is true. You're right of course that one or the other will always turn up, but we still get to say, on each occasion, here's what makes R v ~R true this time.
(Snipping the rest the past-my-bedtime speculation about truth. Probably shoddy stuff anyway.)
Yeah, it is:
Interesting. So we again need a trivalent logic, with (p v ~p) being neither true nor false, but this time in order to defend the correspondence theory of truth.
A marriage of correspondence and anti-realism.
Oh, the time in which we live!
What?
R: it's raining.
~R: It's not raining
XOR: exclusive OR
R XOR ~R: It's either raining, or not, but not both
T: true
A bunch of T's down a column: this is true regardless of whether it is raining or not raining.
Therefore,
Quoting Janus
IS false.
You are not doing argument.
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
Cheers. Bye.
Further admissions?
Of course I am "doing argument"; I am examining the actual and interpretive possibilities. It seems you think I have contradicted myself, but the first statement should be read as 'if the formula is true, then it corresponds to the fact that it is never, at the same place and time, both raining and not raining". But then I go on to question the meaning of 'place'. If 'place' means 'Earth' then obviously the formula is not true. Then I offered the example of standing on the edge of a storm front. So the truth of the formula rests on the meaning and scope of 'place'.
In any case, if the proposition 'it is either raining or not raining' is true then it corresponds to the fact that it is always and everywhere either raining or not raining, leaving aside all other considerations of time and location as well as whether it is actually true or not.
Likewise if the proposition "it cannot be both raining and not raining:is true, then it corresponds to the fact that it cannot ever be both raining and not raining, regardless of considerations of time and location and whether it actually is true or not.
If you think none of this constitutes a valid argument then you should be able to say why it is not, but you have made no attempt to directly address anything I've said. All I'm getting from you, as usual, are pompous statements with no accompanying explanation. It's a poor showing.
:rofl:
You're either right or not about those sentences that assert nothing.
Quoting IEP
And that Mary agrees. And you have at least two speakers to deal with if you don't.
So
Quoting Pie
reduces further to a property of utterances. E.g.
Language (and even logic) as opinion polling. Which gets my vote, although it can sound daft. As can coherence theory in general, after all.
It could rain without anyone noticing it, but there would be no proposition without someone to produce it. And truth is of the proposition. Therefore no truth without someone noticing something.
Yes, I made a similar point at the very start of this discussion. And here which includes a translation into ordinary English.
No, I don't think I was saying anything like that, just offering motivation.
(Snipping lots of musing about "It's raining or it's not", which was more fun to write than to read.)
I'll stand by my two suggestions:
(1) it's reasonable to say disjunctions are made true by one their disjuncts being true;
(2) correspondence can naturally be taken as applying only to informative claims, so tautologies need not apply.
I don't think the mere existence of disjunctions or conditionals falsifies correspondence theories. (Seems like we would have heard about that if it were so.)
But it was gibberish both times.
Quoting Michael
That's not how that works. You don't need existential generalization to know that q exists; you just predicated something of q!
You're trying to say that if something has a property then it must exist. But the assertion that something has a property presupposes that it exists. Asserting that it doesn't have some property would work just as well.
You don't "find out" that the individuals in your universe, like q, exist; you assumed them when you built it, or you name them (uniquely!) when you create them, as with existential instantiation.
The pertinent point is that given the premise ?p: T(q) ? p, the conclusion ?p: ?x(x=q) follows, which suggests either that the world is exhausted by our descriptions of it or that expression-independent propositions exist.
The simple resolution is to specify the T-schema as saying that for all propositions that p, the proposition that p is true iff p.
Quoting creativesoul
Also @Luke, from the exchange about named entities being true.
I think I'd say the above is not a belief, but a belief-mediated perception. We see the sheet-as-sheep. We might hold beliefs about sheet-as-sheep -- but note how this strays from logic, and is clearly phenomenology, complete with dashy-portmanteaus :D
Maybe unpalatable to some, but to answer:
Quoting creativesoul
I'd say perception is linguistically mediated in us, but that perception simpliciter, in all species, does not require language. When we talk of beliefs in animals we're speaking in folk psychology. We understand the animals, being animals ourselves, and we're speaking of their psychological states through the folk concept of "belief" -- and I say "folk" non-pejoratively, because I think the folk concept of belief -- and truth, for that matter -- is actually better than a lot of philosopher or scientific inventions. Just not as precise as philosophers or scientists like, as @Sam26 said, since they really really like being right about things in lots of circumstances, when folk-notions simply don't work that way.
Also feel like noting that all of us have already undergone that transition, having started without language but then, through exposure to the language-using social world, we learned it through our social practices. (and hasn't anyone noticed how dogs, and our fellow apes, learn bits of language with training? That is, if the Lion spoke to me, I'd know what the Lion said -- at least as I think of things)
Quoting Luke
I think the best way to define the "mention operator" as I called it, and had yet to be able to answer your question, is to say what it does is it converts a natural-language string into a name for that said string using the same alphanumeric characters, but changing its function from a proposition to a name.
One thing I'm noticing here, in your examples, is you like to treat existence like a predicate. So the existence of things gives propositions used their truth-value.
"This river contains many fish" is true iff there exists a river, and the river contains, and the object contained by the river are fish, and the relationship of said fish to the numerical predicates in the context its within is such that speakers would say "many".
You agree with this:
Quoting Luke
On your account of correspondence, how is it that "There is no river on this dusty plane" true? The fact is the dusty plane, rather than the no-river. But the proposition is about the no-river. Or, the classic "The present king of France is bald". There is nothing to which this proposition refers as we speak it today. So you'd likely say something like the proposition is either obviously false, given there is no fact to the matter, or does not have a truth-value, or something like that. But that's something I liked about the plums example -- here was something that would matter, and is a lot more natural to our way of thinking. When you open up the fridge and see nothing in it, the no-plums have an effect on your state, at least. The nothing has an effect on us. And especially the no-plums, if we wanted plums. The no-plums have a relationship to the believed proposition. The fact is the empty fridge, and yet the sentence is "There aren't any plums in the ice box", and it's true. (or, perhaps you could say the fact is the imagined plums, but then we'd have facts-about-imaginations which doesn't work quite the same as facts-in-the-world, hence our confusions)
Given that true propositions about what is not there are many, and we are saying that truth is correspondence to facts, there must be non-entities to which said propositions correspond to -- unless you have some kind of translation you always perform on statements which use names referencing nothing, like "When non-referring names are used, the right-hand side of the T-sentence will be translated into names which refer to be understood" -- something I'd say looks ad hoc, on its face, though perhaps there's another motivation to speak like this.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Janus
Another thought in the back of my mind, though to develop it more I'll have to look at temporal logics now --
But this exchange reminds me of Kant's distinction between logic as such, and transcendental logic -- the primary difference being one abstracts from spatio-temporal relations, and the other does not. If you'll allow the indulgence, I believe it goes back to Aristotle's definition of non-contradiction which you are mirroring here, @Janus --
link
[quote=Aristotle in the SEP on Logic]“It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect” (with the appropriate qualifications) (Metaph IV 3 1005b19–20).[/quote]
Still, worth highlighting that the relationship between time and logic is thorny. In a sense logic should be timeless. Yet we live in time. What to do with that?
Quoting Moliere
This seems consistent with indirect realism, idealism, and similar frameworks which work from the same fundamental mistake. Namely, that we have no direct access to the sheet(in this case), so we're not seeing the sheet, but rather only our perception, conception, sense datum, etc. thereof. I reject that view because it is based upon invalid and/or untenable reasoning(argument from illusion, etc.).
I'm not using "belief" in the same way you are either.
So, sure... there are different ways to account for meaningful thought and belief, and you've presented, roughly, one very popular mistaken one.
lol
Is that what I said, that philosophers and scientists really really like being right. I cracked up when I read this. Although the latter part of that sentence, viz., everyday speech doesn't work that way, is something I would say. I think I may know where this comes from, but it's the way it's worded that I thought was really really funny.
I do think this whole notion of looking for a precise definition of truth is just a waste of time. It's like trying to find a precise definition of the concept game, or, trying to find a precise definition of pornography. There are just to many uses with too many variables. Do I know all the variations of the use of the word game? No. Do I understand what a game is when I see it, most likely. Is the word useless without a precise definition, obviously not. A vague use might just be what we need in many social interactions.
I like the notion of correspondence, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to try to come up with a theory that explains every use of truth as correspondence. I like that it generally works. Probably in most or many cases we can see what corresponds, like how a painting of Joe's farm corresponds to the arrangement of the house, the barn, the pig pen, etc., at Joe's farm. Is this how every use of the concept truth works? No. Does this mean that I don't know what truth is? No.
There are just too many lines of thought, distorted by hundreds of different uses of concepts. It's like trying to find the best move in chess, sometimes you can, but often you make the best move based on a variety of factors. Again, there are just too many variables.
Indeed. If we are to have a philosophically and scientifically respectable position, the evolutionary progression of meaningful thought and belief must be sensibly accounted for. That requires a notion of meaningful belief that is simple enough that language less creatures are capable, and rich enough in potential to account for the evolution into language use(langauge creation/acquisition) all the way through to thinking about thought and belief(and language use) as a subject matter in its own right(metacognition).
Current convention is incapable of doing that because it places the initial emergence of both truth and meaning on the wrong side of language creation/acquisition, amongst a few other fatal flaws(accounting malpractices).
Situations, circumstances, states of affairs, and/or events all have parts.
"Snow is white" is true by definition. The more interesting cases are not.
Well, I extrapolated, I'll admit. :D - glad to amuse, though.
Quoting Sam26
I agree with this. Philosophy is useless, after all. (at least, it should be ;) ) -- one might reframe the question, then. Without a definition being able to be supplied, what could we ask of a theory of truth? What is it we're asking after in the first place? Definitions cannot be pinned down, and you and I, at least, agree that truth is the sort of thing without a precise definition -- in fact, if we were tempted to define truth based on our philosophical practices, we might say that truth morphs itself with context -- that which theory we use is context-dependent. Or, if we're error-theorists, then we'd just say there is no such thing as truth itself, and its more like a character in a story about our sentences.
Quoting Sam26
This is interesting, and takes my mind in yet another direction -- another possibility, or fair inference from what we've said so far about truth, is that it's simply not definable nor morphable. In some sense we might say that truth is transcendental to all conversation, in the sense that it is the necessary belief for all statement-making speech to be possible at all. In which case it's a bit like defining the noumena -- it's a place-holder in conversation for something bigger than what we can comprehend.
Well, hold on a second there. Suppose the case of seeing the sheet-as-sheet. Then we'd have direct access to the sheet. It's just that it is also possible for us to see what we have direct access to as something else we have direct access to. (whatever "direct" is doing now... without indirect-realism/idealism to define "direct", it seems superfluous)
"as" is a linguistic expression of a phenomology of perceiving entities as particular entities. So with the usual Gestalt phenomena we'd say that we see the ink-as-old-woman or the ink-as-young-woman, or the ink-as-duck or ink-as-rabbit. That is, the question of "access" or realism/anti-realism is set aside for now.
What that would mean is that individual perception is not some means for seeing knowledge, or something. But I'm fine with that. Knowledge is socially created and accepted before a community of knowledge-producers, rather than epistemic Robinson Crusoe's seeing authentic truths that they write down.
Philosophy isn't useless, that's not what I'm saying, some philosophy maybe useless, but to lump it all together as useless is to not understand the nature of philosophy. For example, you're putting forth a philosophy when you respond to what's been said. If you have a set of beliefs about life, science, morality, truth, etc., and you're using reasoning to explain your arguments, then you're doing philosophy. It's just a matter of doing philosophy well, using well reasoned or well grounded arguments. Everyone does philosophy in some sense. Especially if you think about life.
This has been said more than once.
It's not right.
The definition of snow is frozen atmospheric water vapour. Colour is irrelevant.
Basically that philosophy is useless is a feature, to me, rather than a bug. Though I agree, if pressed, that the kind of philosophy which deals with one's particular life circumstances and feelings -- the stuff that the general philosophy often attempts to grasp in a more general way -- is useful-for, but it's only useful-for-me. The useless stuff attempts -- and seems to fail -- at a more general aim.
So the uselessness of the dialogue on truth isn't something that counts against it, in my opinion. It's a wonderful waste of time (and then, once in a blue moon, someone is clever enough to turn a waste of time into something useful)
The point, so far as there was one, to this discussion is to find a grammar for our notion of truth that holds together in a more or less consistent way.
The core of that consistent grammar is, roughly:
On topic: I think that you and I agree on those three things, thus far.
Is hitting the target a property of the arrow?
...and yes, it is the purpose of an arrow to hit the target, as of the proposition to hit the truth.
Hence I avoided "Truth is a property of propositions and such".
And of course, as for all language, we can add the general deranged epitaphs clause that one might set up a proposition that deliberately is false, as one might shoot to miss.
That's basically what I've been saying, but in terms of use within our forms of life. So, I think the best way to look at the concept truth is in a Wittgensteinian way, i.e., via the PI and OC.
Quoting Banno
I'm not inclined to separate true and false from belief. What we believe to be true and/or false is where these concepts get their life. Moreover, why would we need another meta-language to explain what we mean in our everyday language? And, how many other meta-languages do we need to explain our other concepts? I find this problematic to say the least. In other words, to explain "p" is true IFF p you have to go back to our everyday speech (give e.g's), otherwise it has no meaning apart from our everyday uses. I don't believe "p" is true IFF p adds anything significant to the discussion of truth, if anything at all.
Nor am I. To be sure, to believe that p is to believe that p is true. They are not unrelated, but they are different, and have differing uses in both language and form of life.
And the difference can be best seen in that truth ranges over propositions, while belief relates a proposition to a person. The one is unary; the other, binary.
Quoting Sam26
I don't see that we do. Our everyday language permits us to talk about our language, and so is it's own metalanguage. The various logical systems are part of our everyday language, not seperate from it.
The T-sentence, and especially the discussions around it, set out the relation between truth and meaning, set the syntax for that form of life.
Put it this way: are you willing to deny the T-sentence? If not, it gives a point of agreement, If so, it gives a point of departure.
Let's stay with this for a moment.
I don't see how a proposition that's true, has meaning apart from what one believes to be true. What I'm saying is that it doesn't seem to make sense to separate propositional truth from beliefs. It's as if true propositions exist in some metaphysical reality, apart from beliefs. I'm assuming that what you mean by "truth ranging over propositions," is that propositional truth can stand on it's own apart from belief. What does it mean for a proposition to be true apart from someone's belief that it's true?
This is very problematic. Do you mean, 'where p is what is believed to be the meaning of "p"'? That would just make truth belief. Or what exactly do you mean by "the meaning of 'p'"? Since it appears to be very important to the truth or falsity of "p", according to your scheme, maybe you could give us some guidance as to how to determine the meaning of "p".
Good idea. A bit of depth.
We can perhaps see the difference most clearly if we look to the use of each rather than meaning. Let's look at an example in which it might make sense to separate truth from belief.
There's a tree over the road. Suppose Fred believes the tree is an English Oak. But it is a Cork Oak.
We might write, in order to show the bivalency of the belief:
Believes ( Fred, The tree over the road is an English Oak)
And
True (The tree over the road is a Cork Oak).
Quoting Sam26
How? I don't see anything like that.
Quoting Sam26
If you are asking if there are truths that no one believes, then I think a few considerations will show that this is so. Antirealists may well argue otherwise, and sometimes I would agree, It depends on context. That's the topic in another thread.
Quoting Sam26
I hope it is apparent that we seperate truth from belief in those language games around error, mistakes, lies, and so on.
An additional comment, From Searle, to ward off a common error. While "Believes ( Fred, The tree over the road is an English Oak)" has the syntax of a relationship, "The tree over the road is an English Oak" is better thought of as the content of Fred's belief, not a relation between a proposition and Fred. Not marking this distinction adequately is what, I regret, led to @creativesoul's present confusion.
"There's an English Oak over the road." This is Fred's belief. So, instead of it being the English Oak, it's a Cork Oak. So, Fred's belief is false, it doesn't match the facts. So, Fred believes one thing, but the fact is, "The tree over the road is a Cork Oak." It's not, as I see it, a difference between a belief and true, it's a difference between what he believes is true, and the fact of the matter, viz., "The tree over the road is a Cork Oak."
I don't' think your explanation is clear at all. It seems confusing to me. Okay, let's drill further down on this part.
Again, this is ill-formed, mixing predicate and propositional terms with abandon.
But if we try to get to the sprite of the argument, you might validly infer, from "q is true", that something is true; T(q)??(x)T(x).
That is arguably an instance of existential introduction.
But you can't get to "q exists". That'd be an instance of the existential fallacy. That a set has a particular attribute does not imply that the set has members.
Puzzling.
Quoting Sam26
What's unclear about that?
If Fred's belief is false, and Fred's belief is that the tree is an English Oak, then "The tree is an English Oak" is false. To be false is to be not true. So Fred's belief is different to what is true.
Which was my point.
So I'm not seeing a problem.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
By the way, if I was quoting someone, I didn't know it.
Quoting Banno
I can tell you what I was thinking; it's not complicated. In order to tell you some part of how things stand in our shared world, I must be accurate. Big as the world is, it is possible to miss when aiming at it. If I tell you Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, my arrow has gone wide. It may make a bullseye on some other world, but not on this one.
Now we seem to agree that having struck the target is not merely the condition of the arrow, but involves the target as well. They are related in a certain way, and it is that relation that we call "having hit the target". Examine the arrow, and you will find it is no different from any other, no different from one that missed the target entirely, no different from one still in the quiver. On all this, I take it we agree.
Truth is when you hit the target.
Quoting Banno
Indeed.
But if you don't mean that truth is a property of propositions, I don't know what you mean when you say "Truth ranges over propositions and such." "Ranges over" how? What does that mean? Does the rest of the world play any part in this ranging that truth does?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Nor do I, apart from that it is propositions and such that are true, or not. In a way this is stipulating the sense of "true" we are using here; as might be opposed to a true friend or a true note.
Consider the accepted though controversial definition of knowledge as justified, true, belief (JTB theory of knowledge). A proposition p is knowledge IFF
There's a knower K
a) who has the belief p
b) p is true
c) p is justified
If all conditions a, b, c are fulfilled K knows p and that's knowledge. Clearly, since p is true is a separate condition (b) to justification (c), the conclusion is obvious viz. that whether p is true or not needs to be determined independently of its justification. For that the first port of call is a definition of truth that has nothing to do with justification i.e. we can't say that a proposition p is true IFF there's proof of p. What might this definition (of truth) be and how are we going to verify/falsify the truths of propositions in a way that skips proofs/justifications?
And I must be shooting at it. I do other things as well.
But yes, it stands to reason there's a target. Problem?
Quoting Banno
And the arrows that are stuck in the target are indeed there, can be counted and so on. But you would count them not because they are arrows, but because they are arrows that are stuck in the target. There are lots of arrows. Arrows are cheap. What makes an arrow interesting, given that I was aiming at the target, is that it hit.
We can move on to nails I hit right on the head, if you're tired of archery.
Indeed, if belief and truth were not different, then all we would need for knowledge would be justified belief.
@Sam26?
Only that those who might suppose there to be no difference between truth and belief do not seem to have the benefits of a target for their arrows.
I don't see that we have a point of disagreement.
Personally I think the attempt to separate logic from temporality and spatiality is doomed to fail, or to yield an insipid and uninteresting logic, that is merely formal, and suitable only for "bean-counter" types. I think you are right about the connection to Aristotle. My questioning of the role of time and place in such formulations as 'it is either raining or not raining, but not both' shows the ambiguity of the idea of place. Time is easier for us to delimit since we have clocks.
Other examples like 'an object cannot be both black and white all over' are much less ambiguous. We can visualize the impossibility of an object being two colours or tones all over very easily, just because such a thing is impossible to imagine.
So, I believe that what seems self-evident in logic is so because of what we perceive and what we can imagine perceiving, and what we can consequently imagine being the case. To my way of thinking this is the essence of modal logic; what is impossible in all worlds just is what we find impossible to imagine, and I think what we can imagine is constrained by the general characteristics we are able to identify in what we perceive. If we perceived very different images of the world with very different characteristics, then we would be able to imagine what for us, as we are, is unimaginable, and our logics would be correspondingly different.
I believe in mathematics truth is defined as provable i.e. knowledge is justified [s]true[/s] belief (truth is redundant i.e. subsumed under justification).
Is your belief that Paris is the capital of France true or merely justified? If you want to say it's true and justified then it would count as knowledge according to JTB. But if you want to say it's true, does that mean that you know it's true or you merely believe its true?
If you can say you are certain that Paris is the capital of France and that therefore 'Paris is the capital of France' is true, then if you were correct then you could be said to know that your belief is true and justified.
It's odd that JTB says that in order to know something, what we take ourselves to know must be justified and true. But if we knew both of those conditions were satisfied, we must already know whatever it is we know to be true independently of its being justified, since they are separate criteria.
That's why I say that to know is to be certain, as distinct from merely feeling certain. But then how can we ever be certain that we are certain? It makes it look like JTB says we can have knowledge but never know (in the sense of not merely believe, or feel certain, but be certain) that we do, because that would involve an infinite regress.
Anyhow, we're in Gettier problem territory as per my map. There seems to be an gap between truth and justification i.e. even if you have a proof for a proposition p, p can still be false. Go figure! From an induction perspective this makes complete sense of course but from a deduction point of view - the conclusion is necessarily true if the premises are and duely plugged into a valid argument form - it doesn't. You mentioned infinte regress, gold star for you!
I think it's just a post just going around in circles, making it seem complex, but it is the inevitable going around in circles when trying to claim not merely belief, but knowledge (except in the case of that which is presently perceived) that is the problem. Belief may consist in feeling certain, but we don't merely want to feel certain, since then it would be possible to be wrong, but aspire, futilely, to be certain; in other words to be able to claim knowledge that we, per impossibile, know that we know and know that it cannot be wrong.
Of course, for all practical, non-skeptical, purposes we have all kinds of "certain" knowledge.
So you agree that truth is a relation between a proposition and something else. There might be more that goes into that, but it's at least that.
Here's a variation on this theme. Consider the arrow again. You could say Hit(some-target, some-arrow), and that would be a two-place predicate. But you could also, given a target, produce a one-place predicate, Hit-this-target(some-arrow). You get the one-place predicate by partially applying the two-place predicate.
Now compare how we handle truth in possible worlds semantics. Is truth a one-place predicate? It can be, if you have fixed which world you're talking about, but the general form would be True(P, W), right? It's a start, but you'll often see more, adding a catchall "situation", ?P, W, S?, or time and location, ?P, W, L, T?. You could certainly add language, and deal directly with sentences. However complex this relation becomes, you could always curry it to get back to a one-place predicate "true".
But truth is only a one-place predicate by assumption or by choice.
It's at the very least a relation between a proposition and something else. Agreed?
Fallibilism springs to mind. Methinks we've set the bar so high that we can forget about 1[sup]st[/sup], 2[sup]nd[/sup], and 3[sup]rd[/sup] positions, there isn't even one who can make the jump.
I say we make do with what we got ... pray and hope for the best!
Did I? Seems a step too far. I think I maintained that truth ranges over propositions, in order to contrast it with belief, which seems to involve both propositions and believers.
Maybe you should rephrase that for Srap Tasmaner's benefit.
Yes, if truth were not a relation between a proposition (or belief) claiming (or believing) whatever and something else that provides the conditions for thinking the proposition or belief to be true, then truth would be an empty wheel spinning in the void.
You seem a bit too preoccupied with where you believe my position is mistaken. That's several times now where you've charged my position with some sort of confusion or mistake that you imagine, I suppose, that you understand. It's almost as if you do not understand that your ontology for meaning, truth, and belief stops at meaningful marks whereas mine digs a bit deeper.
What's the difference between seeing the sheet and seeing the sheet-as-sheet?
The idea of fallibilism in relation to belief makes sense, but not so much in relation to knowledge. To be fallible is to be possibly wrong and if knowledge is true, how could it be wrong? There seems to be a mighty hole in the AP submarine!
No progress there, so let's revisit "ranging", then I'll give up:
Quoting Banno
So your position is that "true" is a word that can be applied to various things -- statements, beliefs, friends, bicycle wheels, and so on -- and you've chosen some of those things that seem related and said you're using the word "true" in the sense that it applies to those things; and the sense in which the word "true" ranges over some of those things is, well, that you can apply the word "true" to them.
Anything to add?
Sheet-as-sheet is stronger :strong:
Not so much bicycle wheels. Statements, beliefs, sentences, utterances, yes. And yes, there is not much more to its analysis than is given in a T-sentence. I've been maintaining a deflationary account, with nothing more substantive like coherence or correspondence.
I like small truths. I've found them more... congenial. Other views suffer hubris.
I asked a related question elsewhere and got this as the answer by someone more knowledgeable than me:
But if you prefer, perhaps address the English language translation:
1. for all p, the proposition that p is true if and only if p
2. for all p, if the proposition that p is true then the proposition that p exists
3. for all p, if p then the proposition that p exists (from 1 and 2)
4. for all p, the proposition that p is false if and only if not p (from 1)
5. for all p, if the proposition that p is false then the proposition that p exists
6. for all p, if not p then the proposition that p exists (from 4 and 5)
7. for all p, the proposition that p exists (from 3 and 6)
Are you saying that 2 and 6 are false?
The more precise form of my argument takes as a premise ?p: T(q) ? p and so concludes ?p: ?x(x=q). It doesn't conclude ?p: ?x(x=q), and so there is no existential fallacy.
What does this difference amount to? How is Fred's false belief different from someone's true belief, other than one propositional statement is true and the other is false, which amounts to a difference about the facts. Also, I do believe truth and falsity are properties of propositions.
For me, the content of a belief is expressed as statements/propositions. Moreover, I don't see how Searle can get away from the idea that there is a relationship between what Fred believes and his statement that he believes it. As if there is some mistake here to be avoided. The only mistake is adding in these extraneous notions. I don't see any of these theories adding anything important to the idea of truth. I think Wittgenstein had a point about these kinds of theories, which is why he tried avoiding them.
Just that. The argument is ill-formed.
What can we do?
Well, we might take "t" as a first-order predicate over a domain of propositions; I gather you want to do something like this. It's fraught, as should be clear by now. All it does is assume that propositions exist by putting them into the domain.
We might try a free logic, but then we'd have an expression something like "whatever is true exits", and fall foul of the inexpressibility of Existence Conditions
Can you demonstrate something on that basis?
Did you bother even reading the rest of what was said?
It's not ill-formed.
And, to use ordinary English language, are you saying that the below is false?
If the cat is on the mat then that cat exists
Well, a difference as to the facts is exactly a difference as to which statements are true.
And it's held by someone other than Fred.
That's it.
Yes, and read a few chapters on pred logic and free logic. :brow: The white sauce nearly caught in the pan - I shouldn't read while cooking.
I tried to formulate a few versions of your argument to see if I could get it to work in a formal system, but could not.
Q(a) already assumes that a exists, so of course it follows - from the definition of ?x.
Try it this way: can you conceive of a proposition that does not exist?
Then what does it mean for a proposition to exist?
And can you remind my why we started on this argument?
Then the argument is valid. From the premise ?p: T(q) ? p it follows that ?p: ?x(x=q). For all p, the proposition that p exists.
Quoting Banno
We didn't. This argument was a response to Pie's OP where I wanted to draw a distinction between these two related claims:
1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p"
The former has a possibly problematic entailment as my argument shows.
But as I said to Srap, the simple resolution is to specify that the T-schema is saying ?q: T(q) ? p, i.e. for all propositions that p, the proposition that p is true iff p. The conclusion is then the truism that ?q: ?x(x=q), i.e. for all propositions that p, the proposition that p exists.
Quoting Banno
I was addressing
Quoting Michael
Which was your original point...
1. "the cat is on the mat" is a true sentence written in English iff the cat is on the mat
2. "'the cat is on the mat' is a true sentence written in English" means "the cat is on the mat"
These mean different things. And (1) is true but (2) is false.
Now consider:
3. "the cat is on the mat" is a true sentence iff the cat is on the mat
4. "'the cat is on the mat' is a true sentence" means "the cat is on the mat"
If (3) and (4) also mean different things, with presumably (3) being true and (4) being false, then what of these two?
5. "the cat is on the mat" is a true sentence
6. "the cat is on the mat" is true
Do (5) and (6) mean the same thing? If they do, and if (3) and (4) mean different things, then (7) and (8) mean different things:
7. "the cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat
8. "'the cat is on the mat' is true" means "the cat is on the mat"
You haven't gotten very far yet. The difference between "it is a Cork Oak" and "it is an English Oak", is that the former is justified. Yet you say that the difference is that the former is true. This makes "true" nothing other than "justified", in practise. But in theory you insist on a difference between justified and true. How do you describe that difference? Where do you turn to place "true", to God's belief (absolute truth), or to the individual's belief (honest subjectivity)?
Where does mention or use come into it?
Quoting Moliere
Hopefully we can avoid that rigmarole. According to the correspondence theory, the truth of a proposition is determined by whether or not a proposition corresponds to the empirical facts of the world. On the other hand, the deflationary claim made by @Pie and @Banno(?) is that true propositions are identical with the empirical facts of the world. Opposing this deflationary claim, I argued that language and the empirical facts of the world are distinct. It is difficult to try and draw this distinction without attempting to use language to gesture at the existence or instantiation of things in the world other than language.
Quoting Moliere
Sounds okay to me. I was thinking more along the lines that "this river" has to refer to something outside the sentence and that, in order for the sentence to be true, it should be in principle verifiable that there are indeed many fish in the river.
Quoting Moliere
I said I might agree that "the no-river" is not a fact; not that it is a fact. On my account of correspondence, the proposition is true because no fact (of a river) corresponds to the proposition.
Quoting Moliere
There is no present king of France, so I'd agree with what you say here. The proposition proposes nothing (presently) verifiable and so it cannot be verified as either true or false.
Quoting Moliere
Right, but this example is the same as "the no-river". We can verify whether or not it's true by seeing for ourselves; that's what "empirical" means, and that's the strength of the correspondence theory.
The arguments for the deflationary theory given here seem to illicitly assume the approach (or "truth") of the correspondence theory without admitting it. If deflationism is no more than endorsing a sentence that one believes to be true, then there is no place for correspondence, verification, "finding out" whether or not a proposition is true, truthmakers, or facts. There is nothing more to truth than endorsement and, therefore, no way of determining or discovering the truth of a given proposition. According to deflationism, looking for plums in the freezer has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the proposition about plums in the freezer. There is then nothing "outside" the proposition that counts for or against the truth of a given proposition. A T- sentence is then no more than an abstract equation with absolutely no relation or reference to reality, as several here have noted already.
That's not a T-sentence, of course.
So what are you doing here?
Check the rest of the comment. You may need to refresh your page as I made some substantial edits about half an hour ago.
The main point is that, prima facie, these are different claims:
1. X is Y iff Z
2. "X is Y" means "Z"
So, prima facie, these are different claims:
3. "p" is true iff p
4. "'p' is true" means "p"
And, as my argument from that original comment shows, (3) has possibly undesirable implications – implications which may not follow from (4) – hence the importance of distinguishing (3) and (4).
I don't know why you are making these claims. They don't seem related to anything.
You said
I think a distinction needs to be made between these two claims:
1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p"
Now Davidson pointed out that if you have a true T-sentence such as
1. "S" is true iff p
then you have in p, in effect, the meaning of S.
Hence my comment.
1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p"
So could you actually clarify what it is you are trying to say? Are you saying that, according to Davidson, (1) and (2) are equivalent?
I was going to say no difference, other than some extra accounting being redundantly performed, but I think I like this answer too:
Quoting magritte
:D
From the examples that we'd be looking at, as persons interested in some meta-lingual predicate, like truth. The example sentences aren't going to be used by us, but they will serve as examples for clarifying, between us, what is meant by the meta-lingual predicate.
So on the left-hand side you have what is mentioned by us (converted into a name for the calculus), and on the right-hand side you have what is used by whoever or whatever our source is.
Quoting Luke
I think what I'd say is that it just leaves those questions open. In the context of the plums, the method for verifying, finding out, and such wouldn't be pre-specified by deflationary accounts. So one could, for instance, go check for themselves. Or they could ask their friend who just came back from the fridge if there are any left. The method of justification is left open with respect to deflationary accounts -- not denied. Clearly for someone to say they believe such-and-such, we'd have to do something to provide a justification in the game of reasons. The deflationary account is just attempting to put that game of reasons to the side of an understanding of the concept of truth -- so that the two are distinct.
So when you say:
Quoting Luke
I don't think I'd say that true propositions are identical to the *empirical* facts. I'd say that true propositions and facts are one and the same, but that doesn't mean I'd discount reality. Reality just isn't the totality of facts, in that case -- as you note, they're just true propositions, so I certainly wouldn't want to reduce the entirety of reality to them. I don't think either @Banno or @Pie have said they'd do the same, either.
Why would I make a distinction between facts and reality? Well, because we cannot count how many facts there are. There could, after all, just be one fact -- the fact of reality itself. All of existence is what makes our sentences true or false. That Mars is the fourth planet in our solar system is related to the empty fridge and so makes "there are no plums in the ice box" true, being the one big fact that's there.
After all, it's not like reality is divided up into English sentences, right? As you say, language and the world are distinct. So we have access to the world on one side, and language on the other, and we match them up. But the world isn't made up of linguistic constructs, so it leads me to ask "what is this matching? What matches what? Where does the fact end and the language begin?" It seems like I'd have to be able to specify what facts are distinct from language to hold up this claim, but I am unable to do so -- as you noted:
Quoting Luke
I agree! :D I suppose I think the correspondence theory sits on "this side" of language -- that it doesn't say anything about reality, but rather about how we think about reality, because I am completely unable to specify the difference between a fact and a true sentence in speech. But I don't deny reality: just this one way of talking about reality, through correspondence, since we are unable to specify the difference between true sentences and facts.
Sheet-as-sheet to me indicates naming and descriptive practices accompanying the seeing. This eliminates language less seeing of the sheet, which - of course - is a problem.
Is it?
If truth is linguistic, and animals don't speak, then those animal behaviors won't tell us about truth.
Perhaps a better tact, though: if truth is more general than linguistic -- say it is a correspondence between some animal belief and facts or reality, construing belief broadly to indicate that it could be linguistic or not so as to make explicit that we're interested in this -- then we are the types of creatures that rely upon linguistic truth, and only by understanding this kind of truth would we even be able to make statements more general about this bigger-picture truth.
Accidentally cut off the link to the post in my reply.
The problem with using the imagination as a basis for logic is that people have different capacities for imagining -- so a logic, then, would only be understandable insofar that we have the imaginative capacity. If our imaginations are a bit dim, then our logic will also be a bit dim, and if our imaginations are incredibly active, then our logic will be incredibly active.
But logics don't have that variability to them. That's precisely what's interesting -- we already know that more clever persons will be more clever. But logic, in general, is nothing more than how we make inferences whether we are clever or dim or not. All we need to do is check the validity of the argument using rules that can be taught. No need to rely upon our imaginative powers to define a logic.
After all, even though I think I have a notion of what it means to imagine possibilities, to take a similar tactic as I did with @creativesoul -- we'd have to understand linguistic truth first to be able to share those imagined possibilities.
Basically it's easier to talk about linguistic truth than it is to talk about the possible limits of our imaginations, especially since our imaginations seem to morph over time depending upon how much we might use them (or not).
Very interesting point there.
Quoting Moliere
I certainly don't advocate any form of idealism, and don't wish to be misunderstood as advocating that there are only propositions, with no world. I am advocating realism as the best way to talk about the stuff around us.
So it is incorrect to say that I have claimed "that true propositions are identical with the empirical facts of the world".
And this is an example of where the nuance found in logic is indispensable. There is a difference between material equivalence, "?", and identity, "=". Folk can use Google if they are unsure of this.
In a T-sentence the true proposition on the left is found to be equivalent to the fact on the right.
This does not mean that they are identical.
Nor does it imply that "language and the empirical facts of the world are distinct"; clearly that the kettle is boiling is not the same as "the kettle is boiling", The first is an empirical fact, the second a piece of language.
I think, Moliere, this is the point you are making. I'm wondering, @Luke, at the wisdom of trying to do philosophy without logic.
Poverty of correspondenceQuoting Luke
What's interesting is how this dissipates when examined. So on this account, say, the truth of the proposition "The kettle is boiling" is determined by whether or not "the kettle is boiling" corresponds to the empirical facts of the world. But when one asks what those empirical facts are, one is told that they are that the kettle is boiling...
Which is exactly to say that The kettle is boiling" is true only if the kettle is indeed boiling.
The salient point here is that this correspondence account says pretty much the same as the T-sentence.
But there are cases where the correspondence theory becomes opaque. It is not at all clear what the "empirical facts of the world" are that make the propositions "four is twice two", "no married men are bachelors " or "this note is worth ten dollars" true. Yet the appropriate T-sentence will still hold.
Yes, I know there are explanations for these issues in correspondence theory, but that ad hoc explanations are needed shows the poverty of correspondence.
It's not that correspondence is wrong, but that it does not work in all case, that leads to the need for a better theory of truth.
Yup!
So such sentences as "that the kettle is boiling corresponds to the facts" aren't wrong, but just an obtuse way of saying that "the kettle is boiling" is true. The deflationary view here unpacks "corresponds" as material equivalence between a fact and a true sentence.
This view would not be acceptable to those who see correspondence as an ontology; those who invoke the existence of a category of things called "facts", sitting somewhere between boiling kettles and the sentences about them.
That's not what I had in mind. No one can imagine a round square, or that something could be both red and green all over. In general, we are unable to imagine the actual existence of contradictory states of affairs, or, perhaps better, we are unable to imagine what a contradictory state of affairs could look like..
It isn't clear what this means. What's a material equivalence? Why not just an equivalence?
And why not call it an equivalence theory of truth if that's what you mean?
*despair*
The problem here of course is that this doesn't really give you the meaning of S. You might say that "S" is true iff p, and replicate "S" with p, but that is just to repeat S, not to give it's meaning. You might make up something else, like "S" is true if q, but that would just be a subjective opinion of the meaning of "S". Or you might propose a justified meaning of "S", but that would just give you a justified meaning of "S", not the true meaning of "S". So the T-sentence really gives you absolutely nothing.
I'd have said some things once unimaginable are imaginable to me now. For instance, I thought classical and quantum mechanics conflicted at one point. I couldn't imagine that these could both be true! It was impossible!
Now, I'd say, I can imagine that. And I can tell persons who can't imagine it what finally clicked for me.
So I'd say that what you're calling "logic", I'd call "giving reasons to appeal to reason", or something like that. These arguments are important. I still reference Kant and Aristotle and all them. But there are times when what appears to be contradictory states of affairs to our imagination turns out to be an inability to imagine the right way of connecting what at first appeared contradictory.
Hence why imagination, though it is the capacity we use in thinking about logic, isn't the same as logic.
Material equivalence is usually thought of as obtaining between two propositions, or not. If two propositions have the same truth values on every row of a truth tables. It's another way of saying "correspondence".
I think there are things which are simply unimaginable as I said, and it is those things I am referring to, not things which change; which we can come to imagine with more practice or whatever. Think of Kant's pure forms of intuition: we cannot imagine an object without spatial dimensions, or without persistence in time, or without form, or without constitution, and so on,
Your reference to QM is a good case in point: it seems contradictory to say that something could be both a wave and a particle simply because the way we imagine each of these to be seems to make them incompatible. I think it was Feynman who said "I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics". I think it's obvious he means that no one can imagine what is going on, not that no one can understand the maths.
Or take the idea in relativity theory that mass warps the fabric of spacetime: no one can imagine, in the sense of visualize, a three dimensional space warping (into a fourth dimension), so to get some visual purchase on the idea a model of a two dimensional surface warping (into the third dimension) is offered.
That's not truth deflation and most definitely not correspondence theory.
These supposed counterexamples were given:
"But there are cases where the correspondence theory becomes opaque. It is not at all clear what the "empirical facts of the world" are that make the propositions "four is twice two", "no married men are bachelors " or "this note is worth ten dollars" true. Yet the appropriate T-sentence will still hold."
I don't think the correspondence account (I dislike "theory") is opaque in these cases at all. "Four is twice two" can easily be demonstrated empirically with apples; in fact it is by using objects that children are taught to count. It is a fact of our world that married men are not counted as batchelors, and on investigation it would be found that bachelors do not possess valid marriage certificates, and have not participated in the ceremony of marriage. That a note is worth ten dollars is a fact easily verified in any store in the world. It just takes a little imagination to see that correspondence does hold, and that in fact we have no other viable account of truth.
There aren't actually two propositions there. It's one sentence. Have you modified the idea of material equivalence?
"As we saw in the last section, two different symbolic sentences can translate the same English sentence. In the last section I claimed that “~S ? R” and “S v R” are equivalent. More precisely, they are equivalent ways of capturing the truth-functional relationship between propositions. Two propositions are materially equivalent if and only if they have the same truth value for every assignment of truth values to the atomic propositions. That is, they have the same truth values on every row of a truth table. The truth table below demonstrates that “~S ? R” and “S v R” are materially equivalent."
From here
I didn't introduce the term into the discussion, but it seem to me that the term is to all intents synonymous with "correspondence", albeit without the metaphysical baggage that can accompany the latter term.
It appears to be the same proposition. If not, how are they different?
This isn't the T-schema, as I'm sure you're aware.
That's: "Snow is white" is true IFF snow is white.
You've got the proposition that snow is white being materially equivalent to the proposition that snow is white. ?
Well, sure it is! Some language less creatures can see a sheet. I would not say that they see a sheet-as-sheet. I don't think you would either.
Quoting Moliere
Not exactly the wording I would use, but I think I agree with the general thrust/idea. I would only note that we not only rely upon notions of truth(linguistic truth), but...
...we also rely upon correspondence long before being able to talk about it. <--------that last bit, of course, cannot be arrived at without complex language use capable of thinking about our own thought and belief as a subject matter in its own right; which is the point you're making if I understand you correctly. If I do, then we agree on that.
Nice comparison/contrast regarding correspondence and T sentences.
:point:
Quoting Tate
You can't do that.
I can't do what?
I suggest you and @Janus work out what you're doing between you and get back to me.
You said deflationary truth is where there's a material equivalence between a true sentence and a fact.
This is not the case. It says there's a material equivalence between "P" is true, and P.
You're just wrong.
Why not? Aren't we doing so right now, through the power of language?
Ok, then. Best if you don't pay any attention to my posts.
Oh dear.
Material equivalence is just for propositions.
Digging in...
There is no single referent for "linguistic truth". There are several. The only one applicable to language less creatures' belief is correspondence. My twenty-seven-month-old granddaughter knew that "there's nothing in there" was not true, despite her not having a linguistic notion of truth, because she knew what the utterance meant, and knew that there were things in there(the fridge).
That's correspondence understood long before ever learning to how to use the term "truth". Long before becoming aware of her own fallibility, long before skepticism and doubt have fertile enough ground to sprout, long before all that... she already knew when she heard a false claim about the contents of the fridge.
Language less creatures' belief is different though. They cannot know when some statement is false for they do not think, believe, or speak in statements. I'll leave it there for now...
Take it up with Banno; the term was not introduced by me.
No.
I don't agree with this supposed "fact". I was taught how to count by learning an order. We start with the word one, then two, then three, up to ten. A few repetitions and I had the order memorized. It was explained that each number represents a different quantity, but I was not shown those different quantities. I was shown some of the quantities, like one and two, to get the idea of what a quantity was, but that's not how I learned to count. I learned to count by learning the order.
I believe that this is why we readily accept Platonic realism, because when we learn to count in this way, by learning an order, the only objects counted are the numbers. But intuitively we believe that if we are counting, or if we are learning an order, then there must be something real which is counted, or ordered. That is, if one apprehends an order, there must be something which is ordered, and that something is the numbers. Therefore, numbers are real objects, which have an order, Platonic realism.
Now, these examples are close to home, so I feel a bit unfair criticizing them. But I'd say that there's a difference between knowing and being able to explicate a concept, and that twenty seven months is more than enough time to no longer count as "language-less" -- after all, she knew the words and what they meant and what truth and falsity were, what a participant in a conversation is, identities of participants including her own -- so much already there in the game of truth-telling, and --
"There's nothing in there" is true iff there's nothing in there.
Both are false, and so the "iff" is true. So the T-schema works for your example.
Maybe Kant was wrong? But, eh, like I said I'll have to read more before really pursuing this thought. I mostly just wanted to say that the relationship between time and logic isn't some kind of obvious done-deal -- it's not obvious that we should think of time and space as our imaginations depict them.
The granddaughter is not language less. Did you bother to read the entire post?
Quoting creativesoul
That your example was meant to convey something about someone without language using correspondence, so I thought it important to say that language is part of your example.
But I missed the last sentence. OK, this is a contrast case, not an example. My bad. I was reading it as the example.
Sure, I agree that with a language less creature that they do not speak about truth or falsity or anything like that. Say a wild bird -- they communicate, but it's not with language. Or, perhaps we could say, it's a proto-language, prior to having the ability to represent its own sentences.
I have said before that truth is a property of utterances, but I'm less certain of that now. If "facts" are suspect, then "properties" are too -- abstract place-holders without concrete predicates. But I still know what a true sentence is, and while I disagree with the assertion I believe I understand when people say "the Truth will set you free". The meaning is clear.
So there's small-t truth, as the truth of true sentences, and then there's the Truth, or The True. Often times we slip between both claims in talking about Truth, though if we focus we can realize there's a big difference between what Plato means by The True, and what I mean by "I'm telling the truth"
And when it comes to that kind of truth, I've been attempting to work out a reduction of Truth to fiction. Because if small-truth is embedded in language, as I still suspect, then there shouldn't even be any properties of Truth. It's a category for sentences, and "property" usually refers to some aspect of a real thing -- and truth doesn't appear to be real. Or, maybe, it's just as real as language, but that's the place where ontology gets funny (and "property" is probably a misleading term, at least)
Quoting Bartricks
"True" is what we call sentence tokens that bear repeating on their own terms, which is to say, without contextualising in the manner of "... is untrue because..." or "... would be the case if not for..." etc.
Such contexts are potential predators, and must be fought off and dominated.
Or we could do each other's views, but randomly selected, like a secret Santa. ;-)
Anyhow, I can try to summarize where I am at the moment, still in progress.
It seems plain to me that truth is not a property of a sentence, like being in English or in the passive voice or contradictory. It's at least a relation between a sentence and something else; that is, it's the status of that relation that makes a sentence true or false. We use "true" as a 1-place predicate only because the value of the other parameter (or parameters, if we need more) is held fixed, or assumed, or implicated, something like that.
Convention T and other versions of the equivalence thesis may count as adequate descriptions of how we use the word "true," or at least adequate descriptions of a way of using the word common among philosophers, but are only descriptive and offer no explanation for why the LHS tracks the truth-value of the RHS, where all the action is. It notes the material equivalence, and stops. As such, this equivalence should be a consequence of a genuine theory of truth, if such a thing is possible. It may well be that truth has to be taken as a primitive, but I don't think the equivalence thesis either shows that or blocks it.
As for what a theory of truth that goes beyond the equivalence should look like, and whether it's possible, I don't know. Material equivalence is a slightly odd, slightly old-fashioned mechanism to play such a central role in our understanding of the central concept of philosophy. What if, instead, we had all learned in school that if "The kettle is boiling" is true, it's true because the kettle is boiling, and if the kettle weren't boiling, it wouldn't be true. That's a whole different ballpark, logically speaking. I think the natural place to look for why a sentence is true or false is what the sentence is about, and maybe -- this is hard to say without circularity -- what's relevant to its truth or falsehood. The sort of thing you might push over to the epistemic side -- what would enable you to come to know something is the case -- what goes there is the sort of thing that makes the sentence true.
TLDR: if I go on with this, I'll probably be reading up on truth-makers.
It's too basic to analyze. Apparently we don't learn it, since it can't be taught. Maybe it's part of the structure of mind and thought.
Two or three paragraphs is not needed for me. To express your honest belief, to the best of your ability, is to tell the truth.
If you want to discuss what honest means, that would take more than two or three paragraphs.
Excellent proposal.
Truth is different to belief, justification, agreement, and so on, in being unary. Statements of truth have only one place, taken by a proposition, conceived broadly as statements, utterances, facts, and so on. Beliefs have two places, one propositional, the other nominating the believer.
Statements of truth have an illocutionary force that implies authority.
Statements of truth have minimal logical structure, presented in T-sentences. The T-sentence displays an equivalence between meaning and truth. T-sentences can be understood as either using truth to show meaning, or using meaning to show truth.
So if the t-sentence "S is true iff p" is true, then we can either see p as giving the meaning of S; or we can see S and p as giving the meaning of "...is true iff...".
This is a stark, minimal view of truth that does not seek to sort out which statements are true and which are false. I do not think that a general theory of that sort is possible; correspondence, coherence, fallibilism and so on each tell part of that story, but none are sufficient to tell the whole story. They are better thought of as theories about why we might accept or believe this or that statement, theories of justification. rather than theories about the nature of truth.
Leaving aside the possibility that our notions of particles and waves, derived as they are from our experience, are not applicable at all in the quantum context, in other words if that unimaginable synthesis of particle and wave is the actuality (whatever that might even mean), then it isn't logic at all, and it isn't something we can directly perceive or, hence, imagine. That's my take anyway.
The numbers are usually shown to correspond with objects, like five fingers, ten fingers, two eyes and so on.
Quoting Tate Que?
Fair. But who else are you waiting for replies from?
Mind if I invite @Janus, @creativesoul, @Michael, @Luke, @Pie, @Agent Smith, and @Isaac?
Folks,
Quoting Sam26
I'm a serial maker of muddy water, so I shall provide a perspective I don't believe anyone who has been tagged would provide, and perhaps would derail the thread if pursued.
There is an adage that truth is about the relationship of statements to the world. A statement will be true if its meaning is connected to the world in the right way; be that because what it means for a statement to be true is equivalent to a state of the world or alternatively a picture of it. Both of these set up a symbolic-linguistic relationship between language and world. Which is all well and good. But it isn't the start of the story. Why? It takes interpretation for granted.
In either case of construing truth as a symbolic-linguistic relationship of a statement to the world, there is a "word to world fit", how does it fit? Identity or a pictorial relationship. But what is it about statements that makes them able to have either an identity or pictorial relationship with states of affairs? Ultimately, a practical, perceptual engagement with the world which is reciprocal between utterer and world. Statements have a pictorial or identity relationship with states of affairs because they are designed to do so through how we inhabit our environments. That how is what embodies the fit of "word to world", and that how is us using our minds and bodies.
Ultimately then, what it means for a statement to be true is a derivative case of what it means for a relationship between a human and their environment to be in a certain way. Truth is produced through a way of engaging faithfully and perspicuously with the world and your own place in it, and in a reciprocal, adaptive and transformative manner. That production is also an interpretation of its environment; a symbolic-perceptual-linguistic one. It fits and makes fit language to world and world to language.
A statement will then count as true if its interpretation matches up with the world. Truth itself is in the non-linguistic (or only partially linguistic) relation of statement and world, not its relata. Thus it is something we do together.
Bloody typical eh. Another Wittgenstein-Heidegger correspondence. : D
What we mean by our concepts, in this case truth, is a function of how we use concepts in our “forms of life,” that is, it is a linguistic social construct. These linguistic social constructs are governed by implicit and explicit rules (rules of grammar and other socially contrived rules), but these rules are not always hard and fast, they allow for expansion and contraction. However, expand too much, or contract too much, and you are pushing the limits of what can be said, or constricting what can sensibly said.
Our use of the concept truth is a function of statements, more precisely propositions. Propositions are used to express one’s belief or claim within a rule-governed social context. These propositions are for the most part binary in nature, that is, if the claim/belief is true, then the proposition aligns, corresponds, mirrors, correlates, pictures, a fact (state-of-affairs) in reality (reality being anything that can be said to exist, even the abstract, as well as the stories of fiction). If the proposition misses the mark, or does not accomplish its goal, as a picture or a correlate of reality, then it is false.
The ontology of facts is quite broad in its depth, as I have already hinted. We can speak of facts in objective reality, for example, “The Earth has one moon.” We can speak of the facts of logic and mathematics, which are governed by the rules of these particular languages. We can also speak of subjective facts, for example, “Sam likes apples.” There are even facts of fiction, which have no objective instance in reality, other than the story itself, and the expanded use of concepts within that story. The relation of our claims to truth (statements/propositional claims), or our denial of said claims, namely, our beliefs that such and such is the case, is a relation between our statements/propositions within our “forms of life,” and what we believe are the actual facts of reality.
We experience a constant succession of images and impressions that, due to repetition. similarity and invariance across time for the individual perceiver, and intersubjective agreement about what is experienced between individual perceivers, leads to a linguistically generated "shared" world of fixed objects and facts about those objects and this factual world is an inference to the best explanation for that commonality of experience, and is also pragmatically necessary for communication.
The actual is never contained in this perceptual/conceptual picture of a world of fixed entities and facts, and cannot be "captured" conceptually, even though we all, via our embodied experience, apprehend and understand it directly as a constantly changing heraclitean "flux".
So, in this sense that the world of objects and facts is a collective, pragmatic, conventional fiction; it becomes clear that it is only within this shared ambit that truth finds its meaning. On account of this I say that the logic of truth is simple correspondence between what is said and what is seen, or imagined to be.
It is just an extension of the necessary (to this social game of communication) general correspondence between what is experienced and what is said about that experience that we call 'meaning'. The mistakes in meaningful statements that render them false do not render them meaningless, which shows that interpretations of events must be accurate, in the sense of hitting the mark, in order to be true as distinct form being merely meaningful confabulations.
As poorly expressed as it is, that is my attempt to explain my understanding of truth.
In my experience, the numbers were shown to correspond with quantities, only after the numbers were learns. That's the point, we learn the numbers (words) first, then we learn the correspondence. We counted to ten, then twenty, then learned how to get to one hundred. Fingers were not involved. Learning the concept of "quantity" came after learning how to count. Maybe we should ask a grade school teacher about this, for confirmation. Or, try some Google research: [quote=https://makemathmoments.com/counting-principles/]
1. Stable Order
The first principle of counting involves the student using a list of words to count in a repeatable order. This ordered or “stable” list of counting words must be at least as long as the number of items to be counted.[/quote]
Two is after one, plain and simple, it's the number after one, that's the meaning we were taught. That's how we learned it, as an order, one, then two, then three, then four, ... "to infinity and beyond! ".
A few minutes in a classroom will quickly show that there is no one right way to teach counting. Its a far more complex task than it appears to a competent adult. It should be apparent that the background and capacity of each child must be accounted for.
It's not learning a language game, but a variety of games: counting, chanting, sharing, pattern recognition... Success is measured by the capacity to enter into existing and novel uses.
The temptation is always to oversimplify the task of teaching.
You haven't learned about "order" yet? Do you read left to right? Take a look at a number line. There's no quantities on that line.
What I said in the first post on this subject, is that what is said to be counted, is the number itself. That's why our methods of learning lend themselves very well to Platonic realism.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8......at each point in that series represented by a different numeral, the number of numerals, including the one selected and all those to the left of the one selected, is equal to the number represented by the numeral at the point selected.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have no idea what that means.
It was embedded before humans started counting? That's interesting.
No, the numerals on a number line do not represent the number of numerals, because there is zero, and negatives.
Indeed.
Quoting Tate
That's not what was claimed.
It became embedded after they started counting? Also interesting.
That series of numerals I presented was not meant to represent anything other than the series of numerals that it is.
You could have a series of the numeral '1' like this: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, ..... Select any point and the numeral equivalent to the '1' at that point can be found by counting all the way to the left. If you chose the last '1' on the right. then the numeral equivalent at that point in the series would be '11' because there are eleven '1's including the one selected and all those to the left of it. .
I don't see how that's relevant. it has nothing to do with how we count. That it takes a quantity of eleven things to establish an order consisting of eleven things, does not imply that a person needs to know the quantity in order to know the order.
I'm not talking about communication. I'm also not attributing communication to birds. I'm talking about belief, and how it pertains to and/or is germane to discourse about truth.
I can see how my example could have been taken the way you did. My bad, more than yours on that!
The example is one of an in between stage, meant to point out how we understand when some statements are false long before we have anything close to a linguistically informed notion of "truth".
Again, you really do not seem to have any understanding of the concept of "order". If you have no desire to consider such a concept, then go right ahead, and allow order to remain a meaningless regurgitation from your perspective.
At around the same age you learn your ABC's. That's pure sequence, no quantity.
The, you know, point of math is that things like sequence and quantity end up fitting together.
Learning to count, for instance, is not the same as learning to measure -- right up until it turns out it is.
From one time? No. (It takes kids more than a couple weeks to make it from kindergarten to 6th grade.)
I briefly taught math in a homeschool co-op, to a bunch of teenagers. My favorite exercise was asking them why the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. They knew that they do, and with enough help they could prove it -- but why is it provable? Why is it true?
And now we're back on topic.
I have lived over a year - fact.
I have lived hundreds of years - lie.
I might live to a hundred - indirectly fact.
In thinking about how truth does seem comfortable playing with the other alethic modalities, and still in a possible worlds mood, I was thinking about how truth has to be about our world, about where we live, and is thereby also about us, every time, whether it seems to be or not, because every truth says something about what kind of world we live in and that says something about us as its residents, as part of it. (This is a sort of positive spin on Davidson's Big Fact argument.)
It has to be our kettle boiling, here in this world, for "The kettle is boiling" to be true. There is a sense in which, if our kettle is not boiling, even if it's boiling in many nearby worlds, the sentence "The kettle is boiling" doesn't belong here. (I was tempted to say that a falsehood is like taking a piece from a another puzzle and trying to force it in -- and it's true, falsehoods are an affront, but the puzzle thing ended up sounding more like coherentism, so I've let it go.)
Another way to put it is that truth is when what we say and where we live harmonize. Falsehoods are discordant. [hide="aside"](There's even a goofy technical way to take this: if the possible world we happen to inhabit were defined, model-theory style, by a quite long list of what sentences are true at this world, no falsehood would be a member of that set. It wouldn't belong here, isn't a part of what defines us.)[/hide]
I don't know what to do with any of that, but I do want to understand why truth matters. It does matter, and not only for practical reasons, and I think the answer might be around here. Somehow truth is the speech that is properly of here and properly of us.
Right, I agree one time would be too much to expect except in the case of genius perhaps, so it is probably by coming at it from a variety of examples and directions over time that kids do get it at some point, different for each kid I imagine.
Hypotheticals are also truth apt. "If the volcano blows, a cooling trend will begin.". This isn't specifically about us, and it isn't here.
Whether truth is about a particular relationship between us and the world falls to the point of the Tractacus.
Maybe, but even if you're not stating a fact ("The volcano is erupting") you're saying something about how our world works, aren't you? That our world is such that this event would lead to this other event. The place we belong works this way, not some other way, and surely that matters to who we are.
Anyway, this is more hunch than thought right now. Might be nothing to it.
Basic rudimentary thought and belief formation is the inevitable autonomous result and/or product of certain biological machinery just plain doing its job. It's nothing magical, god-given, or all that special. It's also not all that complicated to understand. We need not turn on our biological machinery in order for it to begin working. We cannot turn it off. It happens all by itself. Thought and belief just happens given the right sorts of circumstances.
The presupposition of correspondence to fact is inseparable from the attribution of meaning within rudimentary thought and belief formation. Indeed, the two remain forever entwined. Some language less creatures are equipped with biological machinery similar enough to our own to be capable of drawing correlations between directly perceptible things. That is how all belief systems begin, how correspondence to fact is first presupposed, and how all things meaningful become so. The cat can believe that a mouse is behind the tree and that belief is true if the mouse is behind the tree, and false if it is not. The cat can have true or false belief that is meaningful to the cat despite not having language.
"Truth" is a term borne of language. Meaningful correspondence to fact is not and needs none.
My views on truth
A proposition p says something of/about something. If what p says corresponds to how that something is, p is true; if not, p is false. For example take the word "to". If I say "t appears before o" then it is a true statement because t does appear before o. By the same token, "o appears before t" is false. I believe this is called the correspondence theory of truth.
I'm told there are some mathematical objects that don't correspond to anything in reality - this I suppose is one reason for the is math invented/discovered? controversy. Unfortunately, I can't think of an example off the top of my head but what about so-called imaginary numbers ([math]i = \sqrt -1[/math])? Plus how about the inconceivability of 4D space ([math]a \times b \times c \times d[/math] - what's that?). As far as I can tell this necessitates a different definition for (mathematical) truth: p is true iff p is provable (from the relevant axioms)? Your guess is as good as mine.
That's all I have so far. Should've worked harder in school & college. Oh well!
My view is probably a mix mainly of deflationism and the correspondence theory (but I also see some value in the coherence theory, too).
Correspondence is restricted only to the empirical, but there might be a way of viewing all propositions as "worldly" and contingent if their meaning depends on use. Even the truth of propositions concerning fictions find their origin in the books of the world or in the way our stories are taught and told. We can verify whether or not Peter Pan wears a green hat by checking the source work or checking what authoritative sources have to say about it.
With the meaning of a proposition being found in its use, this might signify that mine is a strongly deflationary view of truth. However, I have concerns that such a view is too self-contained and stagnant; an unchanging form of "community idealism", where truth is no more than what most experts would believe and say is true. If this were the case, then there would be little room for science to make any discoveries about the world, or for our worldviews to change. At the edges of our society's best understanding of the world must be some sort of contact or correspondence with the world. We must be able to propose and test theories and find results that conflict with our expectations; with our best theories.
Of course, we will remain within our self-contained bubble of endorsing best guesses even when we do make new discoveries; even when we find that the world conflicts with our best theories; and even when we come up with better theories to replace the old ones. But a reflection on human history indicates that we do have a better understanding of the world now than we did before; that our technology is better; that we can make better and more sophisticated use of the resources of the world than we did previously. Perhaps we understand ourselves a little better. We can recognise that some propositions that were once considered true no longer are, and that this will likely be the fate of at least some propositions that we call 'true' today. Of course, some who consider propositions to be timelessly true may find this comical. But that's simply not how we normally use the word.
What about counterfactuals? Are they false (or not truth-apt)?
But the thread is very uninteresting. As usual for a thread on "truth", pages and pages with nothing conclusive, not even any agreement as to which direction to go. I'll take the road to Damascus. No! Don't go that way, the sun's too bright, and you might see the Way out of Plato's cave. No one knows what truth is, so they just make things up, whatever seems reasonable from their world view. How could made up stuff be the truth?
No wonder Pilate would not wait around for an answer, that would be an extremely long wait. Instead, he threw Jesus to the Jews, to let them decide "the truth" about him. Saul figured it out, didn't he? No, he was dishonest, he did not really believe that Jesus was Son of God. But at least his dishonesty was designed for compromise, which produced a semblance of peace amongst fractured theists.
In addition to my reply to Tate above, counterfactuals also imply, right up front, something that is the case, and try to show how that matters, in this world, by imagining that it's not. Anyway, why would the counterfactual as a whole just be false? (Whether they're truth-apt at all has in the past been controversial but not so much anymore I think.)
And that's kin to the idea of truth as revelation. We start out not knowing which of all the possible worlds we're in. The evidence reveals this to us. What was hidden is unconcealed.
I do so love being invited. It’s only later I sometimes regret it.
“...The old question with which people sought to push logicians into a corner, so that they must either have recourse to pitiful sophisms or confess their ignorance, and consequently the vanity of their whole art, is this: “What is truth?” The definition of the word truth, to wit, “the accordance of the cognition with its object,” is presupposed in the question; but we desire to be told, in the answer to it, what is the universal and secure criterion of the truth of every cognition....”
After all the analytical hoopla....there isn’t one.
Yeah, I'm afraid so. I am thinking it all comes back to being, but I'm in no hurry to get there.
I would quibble a little with the word "evidence," which is appropriate for reasonable belief in the absence of knowledge.
For instance, much of a typical chess game can be played heuristically, with little calculation, but there are times when you need to know the truth of the position. When you see it, it's like finding a really good proof in mathematics (yes, there are good proofs and bad proofs); the whole position sort of lights up and you see the truth in perfect clarity, and everything else you were thinking about blows away like so much smoke. Secrets are revealed, indeed. I'm not saying truth is always like that, of course, but that kind of experience clarifies the distinction between your ignorance, before you had seen the truth, however much evidence you may have had for your beliefs, and your knowledge, once you had.
I agree with this. There's a reason the myth of the cave has appeal -- it captures the feeling of discovery very well.
At least we've drawn the scope of our analysis to our experience, as opposed to trying to tie it to something metaphysical.
I'm a bit confused. I just don't quite see the connection between "if Hitler had not committed suicide then he would have been executed by the Allies" being true (assuming for the sake of argument that it is) and the truth being "about our world, about where we live, and is thereby also about us, every time", as you say.
It seems to me that the counterfactual says something about some other possible world.
Although if you want to say that counterfactuals like the above are about our world (somehow) then I'm not entirely sure what significance there is in saying that the truth is "about our world". What would it mean for the truth to not be about our world? Are you just saying that "is true" means "is about our world"?
If that's what we've done, then I was way off. Wouldn't be the first time.
But my thought was exactly that they go together. The sort of thing you can come to know is the sort of thing that makes our sentences true. If the kettle is not boiling, I can't know that it is, and "The kettle is boiling" remains, let's say, unfulfilled.
:grin: I just meant we don't have to get our boxers in a bunch over the status of truthbearers, the content of truthmakers, and the mysterious correspondence relation that's supposed to hold between them.
And we definitely don't need Tarski.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Maybe. Or maybe it's more that we have a constant yearning for revelation, occasionally satisfied by various means, by evidence, by reason, by a moment of clarity where facts come together more comprehensively, or in a new way (if you're Isaac Newton or Einstein).
Is there something mysterious about correspondence?
We have a sentence "the cat is on the mat", we have the cat on the mat, and we say that the former is about or describes the latter. Is that mysterious? I don't really think so. So why would it be mysterious to say that the former corresponds to the latter?
Sentences are not favored as truthbearers outside artificial systems. Propositions work better for that purpose, although they're abstract objects. There's no 'aboutness' to a proposition. It's the content of an uttered sentence, which can take many forms: usually speech or writing.
How would you say a proposition corresponds to a truthmaker? Where do we look to see this relation?
Sure, by way of distinguishing it from ours. "If Hitler had not committed suicide, ..." says right up front that in fact he did. You can't be a counterfactual if you don't start with a fact you're countering. And I don't know how else to take "then he would have been executed by the Allies" except as a statement about what the Allies were like, what sort of action they were likely to take. How is any of this not also about our world?
Quoting Michael
That's a fair question. Some of this is a little odd. If the kettle here hasn't quite come to boil yet, but might have, there is a nearby world where it has. In our world, "The kettle is boiling" is a falsehood, but not so far away it is a truth. Because these come in pairs, you get to say that "The kettle is not boiling" is a truth here. Every falsehood is also "about" our world in this degenerate sense, that its negation is a truth about our world. But this pairing business has another consequence, that you aren't compelled to go theorizing about negative facts and absent truthmakers and such; you only need the positives, because across all possible worlds you have all the positives instantiated -- somewhere. The negatives only duplicate (and then some!) what we already have. Instead of saying there's no truthmaker here for some sentence, you get to say a given sentence does have a truthmaker, it's just that it's somewhere else.
And if you take this positives-only approach, then the question is precisely whether that truthmaker is here, whether it's ours, whether it belongs to this world or another, because it does belong to some world somewhere.
I think you're making things far too complicated. We use speech and writing to talk about/describe the world. If there's nothing mysterious about this then there's nothing mysterious about correspondence.
It's not me. This is a long standing objection to correspondence: that it lacks analytical clarity.
Quoting Michael
And yet, "It's fuzzy" isn't really truth apt until you know the context. At that point, you have an abstract object on your hands.
What abstract object? All I see there is a sentence with no explicit referent.
And that's not truth apt.
Me neither
So you're using "proposition" to mean something like, fully saturated -- I'm thinking of the way Frege calls predicates "incomplete symbols" or something. "... is red" is a function, and needs a name there or a bound variable to be complete. But it turns out completeness in that sense only works for formal languages, and in everyday usage of natural languages you might need to disambiguate, you might need a certain amount of context or background knowledge, all manner of things before your statement is, as I was putting it, "fully saturated" and ready to be true or false.
I find that general approach reasonable, but how do you deal with the circularity? What I mean is, if asked how much context we need to pull in before a statement is truth-apt, the answer is something like "enough for it to be truth-apt." The initial answer anyway. I guess I'm asking for reams a theory, because I have dim memories of work on this problem. Just wondering if you have any sense of how such a project is faring.
Right. We don't assign the truth predicate to strings of words, but to the content of an uttered sentence.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I didn't know anyone was researching that. :grin: I would guess you'd have to go in the direction of Chomsky and provide a theory of language acquisition. It appears that a fair portion of it is innate.
Enough for the proposition to be understood, I would think. It would be difficult to understand a proposition without any context.
"I think you're making things far too complicated. We use speech and writing to talk about/describe the world. If there's nothing mysterious about this then there's nothing mysterious about correspondence."
"It's not me. This is a long standing objection to correspondence: that it lacks analytical clarity."
"We use speech and writing to talk about/describe the world. If there's nothing mysterious about this then there's nothing mysterious about correspondence."
I think sometimes we expect more from certain concepts than they give us, or we over analyze certain concepts in search of a some phantom that will answer our intellectual itch. Philosophers have a tendency to take concepts out of their natural habitat, and place them in an unnatural one.
I think this is one of the things that Wittgenstein got right in the Philosophical Investigations. I'm not entirely convinced that meaning is as simple as use, but at the very least I think it's a good approach to dissolve some of the problems that philosophers effectively invent by injecting undue significance into a word (like "truth").
I was thinking back ages ago, Barwise and Perry, situation semantics.
Quoting Luke
Indeed, the point should have been made already that the only reason to go questing after non-circular criteria for the "saturation" of a statement is so you can formalize it properly. You have the option of fiddling with logic to do some of that, but if your target is classical logic, that's tenseless and contextless, which means all the statements have to be too.
A simplistic analogy for coders: if you write in a standard imperative style where there's state laying around all over the place, your functions may only need to take an argument or two and pull everything else they need from whatever's in scope; if you write in a functional style -- or, next door, Prolog -- then your functions might have to take a zillion arguments, or one or two plus a big fat one bundling a bunch of others together, because you have to carry the state around with you.
Real life is like the imperative example -- state is laying around and accessible, more state is implicated by your utterance, so you do understand things without maybe even knowing quite how you do, though you might be able to work out a lot of it. Logic isn't like that. Formal semantics isn't like that. If it's not explicit somewhere, it's no help at all.
So yeah in real life, it should be said again, we either don't face these problems or resolve them easily. Disambiguation, for instance, is the easiest thing in the world. This stuff is only challenging when you try to formalize it.
@Michael - isn't this reasonably straightforward? You can say a counterfactual is about world x if it is evaluated in world x. For example, so "Hitler would have been executed if he had not committed suicide" consists of a comparison of two worlds, this one (in which Hitler committed suicide) and a 'nearest possible' one y in which Hitler had not committed suicide. We find that "Hitler has been executed" is true in y, so the counterfactual evaluates as true in x.
Those have been the three arguments I've offered against correspondence so far.
Did you mean to quote stuff about Hitler instead of the kettle?
Quoting fdrake
This is more or less the standard view right? But I have to say, "We find that ..." sure looks odd to me.
I guess if I'm going to keep wading into these waters, I'll have to study up some. Presumably you can proceed by defining worlds in which the Allies did and worlds in which they didn't execute Hitler, and then you'll have to defend some way of determining how far each sort is from us, which might be closest, which is close enough, and so on. I'll do my homework.
draws attention to the distinction between Truth and truth. Well worth keeping at the back of one's mind, since there are folk who hold to there being a statable Truth, usually religious, but also often philosophical. I'll take here a Wittgensteinian approach, that such things are ineffable, or they achieve only for aporia; hence, silence.
And I agree with Moliere that the small-t truth is embedded in language, and add that the discussion of T-sentences gives us an outline of how that works, in terms of the relation between meaning and truth,
talks of sentences which prevail. His analysis is in terms only of the illocutionary force of true statements, which is only part of the story.
writes of truth as "at least a relation between a sentence and something else", a theme played with in our recent discussion of arrows and targets. It seems to me that the "something else" here is roughly meaning; or if you prefer, use. Meaning is "why the LHS tracks the truth-value of the RHS". The holism Srap hints at would then be the holism of meaning, in a way familiar from Davidson Rorty and others.
poses the truth is unanalysable, but what counts as a simple depends on what one is doing, hence what is analysable or not analysable is a question of choice. Tarski presents us with an analysis of truth in terms of meaning.
equates truth and honesty, which is to mistake the logic of truth for its illocutionary force.
talks of the relation between truth and meaning: "It fits and makes fit language to world and world to language." Interestingly he introduces interpretation, Of course the rhs of a true T-sentence is an interpretation of the sentence mentioned on the left, after Davidson. The holism is there, with the addition of an aspect of truth as public, shared or communal, somethign that might be worth further work.
repeats mention of the social aspect of language, combined with what looks like the picture theory of meaning. Truth is defined negatively, "If the proposition misses the mark, or does not accomplish its goal, as a picture or a correlate of reality, then it is false".
refuses to let truth get a grip on the world, restricting it to "what is perceived or conceived to be the case", and so is answering the question "what is belief" rather than "what is truth". The oblique references to the communal and utilitarian nature of language remain.
continues the rejection of truth in favour of belief. Something to do with a correspondence between a mouse going behind a tree and biological machinery. I had difficulty following the discussion.
points to the issue of the incompleteness of coherence theories of truth.
also sees this incompleteness, seeing correspondence as explaining only empirical truths, but thinks we might remedy this by treating all truths as empirical. He sees deflation as too conservative, for reasons I was unable to follow.
So a few folk continue to rely on correspondence to explain truth, while a few have come to see it as inadequate. A few folk point to the social nature of language, all good, but not helping with the specific issue of the nature of truth. It's apparent that all language is conventional, except when it isn't, that all language is public, that all language involves interactions with the world as part of a community. None of this helps to isolate what it is that is true of truth...
I'll note that the minimal logical structure of truth displayed in a T-sentence is compatible with almost all the views expressed here, and suggest it as a consensus.
Also, we might agree that there is a close relation between meaning and truth.
I'd imagined an interpretation as a relation, rather than as the RHS ralata. It's what maps the LHS to the RHS rather than the RHS; the arrow itself, not its point. To speak of 'an interpretation' and make it the RHS of a T-sentence very narrowly circumscribes the notion of interpretation and gets you in the wrong frame of mind for tackling interpretation as a topic close to truth IMO. Can elaborate more on the relationship of interpretation to truth from that perspective if required.
Edit: agree with the rest of what you said though.
I was trying to point out that deflationism is also incomplete. If deflationism is only consensus then what is the point of science and testing new theories? What prompts the consensus to change if not some lack of correspondence that we discover between that consensus and the world?
It's a commonplace that science avoids labelling its theories true.
But I'm not following what you mean by "deflationism is only consensus".
I think truth is the exception, per Frege's argument.
Quoting Banno
If it's an analysis, it's not a particularly informative one.
According to deflationism, truth is no more than an endorsement of what is commonly believed to be true. If meaning is use, as per deflationism, then what is true is whatever most people consider to be true at a particular time. But what most people consider to be true changes over time, and I don’t think this can be accounted for by deflationism. The fact that we test new theories and observe the results of those tests and try and gain a better understanding is not a matter of endorsing what is commonly believed to be true. The inconsistency of some of those results with our current understanding indicates a correspondence and/or coherence element of truth.
There is no logic of truth, you ought to realize that by now. If there was a logic of truth, then truth would just be a form of justification.
And, the fact that we often cannot distinguish between when a person is being honest, and when the same person is being dishonest, is clear evidence that "illocutionary force" is irrelevant here. Telling a truth, or telling a lie may have the very same illocutionary force, so the difference between the two lies somewhere else.
Hey? What argument?
The connection between meaning and use is not central to deflation. But it is central to my approach.
And the connection between meaning and use is not just taking a popular vote for meanings.
Quoting SEP: Deflationism About Truth
Hence Tate is quite correct, where he talking about deflation:
Quoting Tate
There's much to like in it! It's very language and statement focussed though. I think we've been through this difference in intuitions regarding perceptual belief formation a lot of times over the years, don't think we have to go through it again here.
From the Heidegger angle I've been taking in this thread though, T-sentences, causal relatedness and belief networks are all methods of statement adequation, by which a statement is assigned a place in a web of other statements through causal relationships and conditions of satisfaction. That takes the web as a given. In the same way that I've been harping on about treating an interpretation as a statement being in the wrong frame of mind to get at truth, I'd say exactly the same thing about basing an account of truth of statements as if it could stand by itself. It needs a joint account of how meaning is tied up with a sense of connection to the world; some of that is perceptual, some of that is conceptual, and some of that is practical. You'd doubtless agree to those things regarding the use of language, Heidegger points out that it applies to the connections themselves between statements; they've got their sense fleshed out by something much different.
It reads like the philosopher of language trope where they talk about statements and truth as a way of getting at our connection to the world, without thinking about how the focus on statements and their truth is a distorted picture. What Wittgenstein criticised about the pictorial theory of meaning (statement -> logical facts) also applies to a sentential one (sentence -> world); making a model of the world and forgetting it's a model.
I think we've had that discussion before too though. The years are long.
Si, si señor!
I think my view is a bit more nuanced than your interpretation. I don't subscribe to any "picture theory of language." I don't like any of these theories. If I'm close to a theory, then it would be something close to a correspondence theory. I also said, "If the proposition misses the mark, or does not accomplish its goal, as a picture or a correlate of reality, then it is false." How you get from this remark to "truth is defined negatively" is beyond me. If this is defining anything negatively, it's a false proposition, which misses the mark. The goal of a truth claim is to hit the mark, namely, does it correspond with the facts of reality, which, if anything is a positive.
There is no one definition of truth that will satisfy every use in our language. I thought I made this clear in my opening statement. "What we mean by our concepts, in this case truth, is a function of how we use concepts in our “forms of life,” that is, it is a linguistic social construct." So, if you want to know what we mean by truth, then you look at how we use the concept in a variety of social settings. Any definition of truth, is going to be inadequate, like trying to define, as in W.'s example, a game.
Trouble with Headgear is that other folk have said much the same thing, yet expressed themselves with far greater clarity.
Davidson in particular, in this case, and leading to the quite different conclusion by ridding us of the model.
Yeah, we've been here.
You've misunderstood. Of course truth gets a grip on the world, but what is the world if not "what is perceived or conceived to be the case" or if you like Wittgenstein's "totality of facts..."
Your ability to misunderstand (whether deliberate or not) is remarkable.
I agree.
Of course.
Quoting Sam26
Simply that you define false, not true. We are left to infer the truth.
Quoting Sam26
On this we agree, so far as substantive definitions. The idea that there could be a single or algorithmic definition of truth is self-defeating. T-sentences just point to the relation between use and truth.
Good. I was worried about you.
Quoting Janus
The world is what is the case*. It's being perceived or conceived is irrelevant.
It seems yours is the only openly antirealist view. Kudos.
*also Wittgenstein.
T-sentences, in my view, do nothing to help people understand how truth is used in social settings. All it does is attempt to define truth in a setting that's so far removed from reality, one wonders if it has a use at all.
And yet, they are correct. I mean, you would not disagree that ('p' is true IFF p), would you?
So their use might be in providing some sort of grounding in relating meaning to truth.
Would be interested in seeing how you'd flesh out the model disappearing. Is it because sentential truth sets out meaning and is primitive + sentential truth says no more than to assert the statement? To me that looks like setting up a model, destroying it, then claiming there was never a model because you've put the toys back in the box.
Like with @Sam26 (I imagine), a theoretical emphasis on pragmatics and a central role for T-sentences in that theory are strange bedfellows.
Look, why don't I just solve the problem of what truth is?
Truth is a property of propositions. And there is debate over what exactly that property is. This can't reasonably be denied.
And we - we philosophers, that is - all know what would settle the matter: the matter will be settled when it is clear to us all that a particular view - theory x - is the one Reason asserts to be the true one. That can't reasonably be denied either. For what more can one do in the way of showing a theory to be true than to show that Reason asserts it to be?
So, the true theory of truth is the theory that Reason asserts to be true.
Well, then our working hypothesis should be that 'that' is what the property of truth amounts to. That is, for a proposition to be true, is for Reason to be asserting it.
I would disagree. I don't see that as helping people to understand the concept truth.
Yes, to say the least.
"What is the case" is meaningless beyond what is communally perceived and conceived to be the case. We can get no purchase on it, and so, to use one of your own locutions, it "drops out of the discussion" as anything other than a possibility that may or may not come to light.
That said, because of that lurking possibility what is communally perceived and conceived to be the case may change over time, which means that even the community as a whole may be mistaken. But this possibility offers no positive knowledge of what is the case, but merely a negative constraint upon what is perceived and conceived to be the case.
I don't think of myself as an anti-realist BTW.
Difficulty indeed. There's no rejection of truth there Banno. Not in the least. What I've done is begin to point out that of all the notions of "truth", there is only one that could be sensibly attributed to language less belief. There is no other notion of "truth" that makes any sense at all when and where language has never been. Of course, given that you hold to convention and only talk about belief in terms of propositional attitude, you cannot get to where you need to go to situate at least one notion of "truth"(correspondence) prior to language. So much the worse for convention and followers thereof.
I could have set out all the common language aspects, but you and I almost entirely agree upon those. That's boring. Instead, I offered how and when correspondence to fact and the presupposition thereof first emerges, as well as the origen of meaning(how meaning is first attributed), so as to offer segue to how it later becomes the case that "is true" is redundant and truth is presupposed within statements of belief. What I offered also makes sense of my grandaughters' ability to know when she heard a false statement despite barely being able to string two or three words together. Of course, I did not connect all those dots, only having written a few relatively short paragraphs. I did offer an exhaustive outline though, or at least the beginnings of one.
What else is the connection? Surely it has a lot to do with how most speakers of a language use the words of that language.
I tend to think of the different theories of truth in philosophy as being the different reasons for why a community considers a truth bearer to be true; the different reasons about how the word “true” is typically used; the different reasons for what “makes” a proposition true. For Correspondence it is the relationship between a proposition and reality - whether a proposition corresponds to reality. For Coherence it is a relationship between a proposition and other propositions - whether a proposition coheres with other propositions. For Deflationism it is the relationship between a proposition and a person - no more than demonstrating one’s assent to a proposition.
I guess I was thinking about Deflationism at the level of community rather than at a personal level; more in terms of what most people believe, much like how most speakers of a language use the word “true”, or how most Correspondence advocates consider what is true to be a correspondence between a proposition and the world. Deflationism at a societal level is the relationship between a proposition and what most people (or most relevant experts) believe.
Janus, while that is true, it is also true that "cat" is meaningless beyond what is communally perceived and conceived to be a cat.
Cats, however, do not require linguistic meaning, communal perception, or communal conception to exist in their entirety in the complete absence of everything needed for the term "cats".
The cat can be hunting a mouse and that would be the case, even if there were no one around... ever. Focusing upon the words, their meaning, and what language takes misses the point here... completely.
On the very idea of a conceptual scheme, again. And that discussion earlier int his thread I had with @bongo fury about the difference between a quote and a use. That kettle is boiling isn't a model of how things are, but just how things are. "The kettle is boiling" might be considered a model.
But that will be misunderstood. Difficult stuff, it seems.
This is a very tricky thing to talk about. Of course I agree that there is a pre-linguistic. non-linguistic actuality, and we can intuitively, that is imaginatively, understand the being of that actuality perfectly well, even though we cannot get any conceptual purchase on it, because as soon as we begin to want to say anything about it it is brought into the linguistically mediated world of "what is communally perceived and conceived".
Yes, the concept cat is meaningless beyond our social linguistic uses.
Quoting creativesoul
I agree. The use of the concept fact goes beyond the linguistic.
Think it's Davidson rather than Tarski. Tarski's work came out of considerations for formal languages right, in that setting I'd guess they're okay (not a logician, don't know). That's a setting where the whole language turns on propositions with fixed and known rules of association, with an associated meta-language that models them. You conjure up a language and a meta-language and relate them. You can just do that in maths and logic.
That's never struck me as a good way of going about setting up a conception of meaning; in Tarski the metalanguage is a language, in Davidson the metalanguage is a (realist, radically interpreted) language which also stands in for states of affairs. It forces the world into a sentential form by having to flow through the convention. Nevertheless, the world isn't a language and doesn't behave like sentence entailments - instead it behaves like the meanings of sentence entailments sometimes. Davidson has an answer there, because the meaning of a sentence is just set out in its t-sentence; still circumscribing the nature of the world to the constraints of a sentential form, when we already know even most acts of language don't care about sentence structure or even just the words in them (like the famous possibly apocryphal example of someone flipping off Wittgenstein, "What is the logical structure of this gesture?").
You've also got the weirdness that comes from convention T working for factual, declarative language and using it to, generically, set out the meaning of non-factual, non-declarative language through how the sentence somehow 'pictures' the relevant state of affairs. EG, like you can elucidate the speech act of flipping someone off through ""fdrake flipped someone off" is true if and only if fdrake flipped someone off". It strikes me as a philosophical magic trick, you conjure up everything which a reader will be familiar with and throw it in their face with the different parts of the T sentence - nothing more needs to be said because of the sheer act of imagination needed to treat the T sentence sides as setting out the meaning embedding everything to someone who already knows the meaning, but nothing at all to those who don't.
I getcha. I was focussing too much on the theory terminating through deflation (no more needs be said), rather than (no more needs be said (because the language terminates in the world). See my response to @Sam26 above if you want to see why that rubs me wrong!
To be clear, you are saying that ('p' is true IFF p), where p sets out the meaning of "p", is false?
Why?
It's all about that which is existentially dependent upon language and that which is not. We need language to draw and maintain that distinction, so our knowledge of that which is not existentially dependent upon language is most certainly dependent upon language. However, the existence of those things is not. There are certainly limits to what we can know about that which is not existentially dependent upon language.
Meaningful correspondence to fact is not, and that is where convention has gone completely wrong. The reason:Not having gotten belief(or meaning) right to begin with. Stuck analyzing propositions and attitudes towards them. Vestiges from centuries old approaches replete with the fundamental mistakes therein.
Indeed. Logical notation takes account of common language use, or at least that's what it's supposed to be doing!
Rest easy Sam...
With any theory of truth, you look for certain criteria to determine truth or falsehood. For instance, with correspondence theory, you look for correspondence between an idea and reality. Specifically, you need to determine if it's true that correspondence exists.
This means that in order to make sense of correspondence theory, you'll need to already know what truth is.
* Frege uses the wording "idea" and "reality" in The Thought.
Now, if you folk could just agree as to where I am wrong...
There is, as a kind of ground to all our propositions, truths and facts, a pre-linguistic actuality to which they must submit. Analysis and conceptualization cannot gain purchase on that actuality, because to do so is to bring it into the linguistic domain, and there all we have purchase on is our communal perceptions and conceptions of what is the case,
So the necessary submission to pre-linguistic actuality is ever-present and ongoing, but cannot be analyzed in its own pre-linguistic "context": It was really Kant who first pointed this out. I guess this is why truth is unanalyzable, since any analysis presupposes the validity of what is purported to be analyzed.
It was Piero Sraffa, and it's almost certainly true. He was a very original thinker. (I read his book a lifetime ago.) They were friends at Cambridge.
This is very close to what makes the most sense to me regarding falsification/verification. If we nix "it's true that" and swap "idea" with meaningful thought and/or belief it would resemble something very close to what I would be willing to defend.
This presupposes that such an agreement is not already complete in the making aside from making it outwardly known.
:wink:
From where I sit Banno, you equivocate the term "fact" by virtue of vacillating between "fact" as propositions/states of affairs/the case at hand and "fact" as true statements. You also practice rendering all belief in terms of propositional attitudes which has the inevitable logical consequence - on pains of coherency alone - of limiting the very ability to acknowledge the brute fact that some meaningful true belief exists in its entirety prior to common language. You know the drill...
Meaningful true belief exists in its entirety prior to common language creation. Either both meaning and truth emerge prior to common language or meaningful true belief exists without meaning or truth.
That's our differences in a nutshell. Aside from that...
The large bulk of what you argue for, particularly the bits involving direct perception(although you never use those terms) is in perfect accord with my own position which, I believe, dovetails nicely not only with portions of your position, but also many other philosophers with whom you agree. I also nod towards the outright rejection of anything remotely resembling a category of stuff that is totally and completely unknowable but somehow the purveyor of such an approach want to then use this completely unknown empty category of things as a measuring device. In order to know that that is not a tree in and of itself, one must know what a tree in and of itself is. Such an approach is untenable. Things like that are also rejected by us both. Hell, even the rejection of private language is shared. The rejection of the conventional view on language that Davidson was arguing against using Mrs. Malaprop and other intuition pumps(thank you professor Dennett) is also a commonality between our respective viewpoints.
The main flaw I seem to see in your view could be roughly described as placing too much of the wrong kind of value upon language use.
You also seem to want to puke at the mention of anything remotely metaphysical, which is perhaps why you cannot even set aside your own current presuppositions in order to grasp how meaningful true thought and belief exists in its entirety prior to language.
Funny that almost a decade ago you and I participated in a much better debate than our recent one:Truth is prior to language. I argued in the affirmative. My view has evolved a bit since then as has your own.
Very cool. Thank you!
Submission of all our propositions to an unknowable actuality?
That pulls the rug out from under our own analysis, does it not?
Does (1) tell us the meaning of "X"? If not then the T-schema doesn't tell us the meaning of "true". It sets out the condition under which "p" is true, but nothing more.
This, perhaps, is the point @Sam26 makes when he says that the T-schema is irrelevant?
From what I've read, it's Tarski, in "On the Concept of Truth in Formal Languages" (1935), where he's trying to resolve the liar paradox. Also, in the course of his thinking he uses Godel's incompleteness theorem as a model for his theory. This includes a meta-language to talk about our everyday language, in terms of truth, that's my understanding.
My point was, that it doesn't help us understand the meaning of truth in the object language. The object language is fine without it. It just adds a layer of confusion to the nature or meaning of truth.
The object language is a formalized language, specifically the calculus of classes in his example.
Just a side note, but Convention T and the T schema are different things.
So Convention T is the claim that an adequate definition of "true" will entail the T-schema for all sentences.
And, as I've mention before, this highlights the fact that Tarski didn't offer the T-schema as a definition of truth, but as a consequence of a correct definition. As I mentioned here, we still need an actual definition of "true".
What would have been wrong with calling such an attitude a sentential attitude? And making it a mental state held by an agent toward a sentence?
A proposition would be no less such an attitude than belief, fear, assertion, doubt etc. The proposition that snow is white would be (e.g.) the proposal that "snow is white" be accepted, or that "snow is white" correspond to reality, or that "snow is white" be true etc.
Not solving much, of course, as such attitudes generally don't.
But folks might be less prone to confuse sentence with reality.
Makes sense! Thank you for the clarification.
Truth takes on a meaning, then, but only through our using a natural language to analyze itself -- through our shared, in this case English, language. (and the sentences we choose to compare)
EDIT: Iteration not in some abstract space of reasoning, but rather, the iteration takes place dialogically. Just to be clear on that.
I've already explained quite clearly why '"p' is true if p" says nothing about the meaning of truth, or even anything about the relationship between meaning and truth. To state it briefly, that is a simple repetition. Context is an essential aspect of meaning, and contexts are not repeated. They are each and every one of them, unique and particular. The expression you've given removes "p" from any and every context, so it effectively renders "p" as void of meaning.
What is important to note is that meaning is a feature of content. Content is material, in the sense of "subject matter", and it is dependent on interpretation. Formalizations (or formalisms) are intended to remove all content, to provide valid logic without the aspect of uncertainty inherent within content. But modern formalism attempts to apply formalizing tactics to content itself. This is a mistake, because we cannot remove the uncertainty from content, and the result is formalizations which are tainted with the uncertainty of the content which infiltrates. In other words, content, (which contains uncertainty), is imported into the formalization allowing uncertainty to contaminate the entire structure. The T-sentence proposed by Banno creates the illusion that we can have certainty with respect to meaning, or content, through exact repetition. But exact repetition is not a real aspect of meaning.
Quoting Banno
I think consensus has been reached. The T-sentence does not do what you say it does.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
OK, so let's say that, where Banno is wrong, is with interpretation. The T-schema doesn't say anything about the meaning of "truth", as a definition would. Nor does it provide a relationship between truth and meaning, because it removes truth from the context of meaning, thereby denying any meaning for truth. That is Banno's faulty interpretation.
It may be worthwhile to consider the relationship between "the correct definition of truth", and the T-schema. We may be able to produce as a valid conclusion, that "the correct definition of truth" is not possible, due to the relationship between truth and the particulars of the circumstances.
Deflation implies that truth is relative, right?
Odd, since it's clear he explicitly deals with the liar by introducing levels of language. It's certainly not a premise in his argument, obviously.
I'm asking because there is a substantive body of work, by the strongest logicians of the last hundred years, that depends on t-sentences. It would be odd if that were irrelevant. Worse if they were wrong.
Sounds right. As mentioned, the substantive theories of truth try to tell us which sentences are true, and not what truth is.
And I agree with the sentiment of what you have said. ""fdrake flipped someone off" is true if and only if fdrake flipped someone off" looks like a trick. The action is taken and reduced to an extensional equivalence that sets out the time, place, and truth function of each element in the gesture; everythgn is in plain view, and yet something seems to be missing...
I get caught by a question from my old lecturer, something like "You are looking for the meaning of some utterance. If you have set out an extensional equivalence that shows exactly what is needed for the utterance to be true, what more could you need?"
It took me a while to realise that this was not a rhetorical question, but a challenge.
Because whatever you say in answer to this question can itself be incorporated into the T-sentence.
Hence I agree that the T-sentence "sets out everything to someone who already knows the meaning, but nothing at all to those who don't". Nicely phrased. The T-sentence presents an interpretation, if you prefer, and so already presumes that speaker and interpreter share both the world and their beliefs about it.
The result seems to be that whatever is missing from the analysis performed by the T-sentence is stuff that cannot be said.
Hence, in making use of T-sentence and the other components of Davidson's machine, we can explicate what is being said, what is meant. And in so doing we clarify what is not being said, what is ineffable. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, use the T-sentence to climb beyond language, then throw it away.
Knowing how to map the extensional equivalence itself to an intended interpretation. When a given person writes a correct extensional equivalence, they've provided evidence that they understand how to form them. An account which sets out how to form such equivalences; namely, which language elements are in which sets; would be an account which sets out the meaning of language items. What it's actually doing is leveraging already known language items to form extensional equivalences without telling you the mechanism that maps the already known language items to the extensional equivalence classes. Only fleshing out the latter is a theory of meaning of natural language sentences.
At best, then, the T-sentence construction places a constraint on the space of possible semantics for (declarative) sentences of natural language. Rather than any particular semantic account.
Quoting Banno
Lol. By the looks of it you've been inflicting that rhetorical gesture on people you've been debating with ever since! If you want to challenge it, recognise it for the rhetorical gesture that it is, and reframe the discussion. It's asking someone to go on a hunt for a "never before seen creature", whenever you come back with a creature, you just add it to the list of seen creatures and send them back out.
IE you challenge it by demanding a positive argument for why a theory which, it is imagined provides an extensional equivalence for every true statement specifies a pragmatic mechanism by which sentences obtain their meanings. What more could you want? A specification of the mapping of natural language statements to extensional equivalence classes; that would at least explain something.
Quoting Banno
On the assumption that the meaning of an arbitrary sentence can be set out by the collection of other sentences which are true when it is.
There is also an issue of natural language not consisting entirely, or even mostly, of declarative sentences. Like "Your partner's love" - a perfectly valid fragment of language, you know exactly what it means, it inspires feeling, memory etc.
"Your partner's love" is true if and only if... Not even the poets could answer that one.
Also thanks. Over the years we've read and annotated decent chunk of Davidson in threads like this one. Wouldn't've studied him if you weren't a fan!
Don't let my psychiatrist in on this conspiracy; if she finds out that my paranoia is warranted, she might stop giving me the drugs.
Quoting creativesoul
What's amusing is that from where I sit, that's exactly what I see others doing. That's the discussion that was had previously with @bongo fury.
Let's have a close look at the vacillation. I'm not sure if you read the discussion with Bong, so I will start with a bit of repetition.
Suppose we have a true sentence of the form
where S is some sentence and p gives the meaning of S.
What sort of thing is S? well, it's going to be a true proposition (here, continuing the convention adopted from the SEP article on truth of using "proposition" as a carry-all for sentence, statements, utterance, truth-bearer, or whatever one prefers).
And what sort of thing is p? Since the T-sentence is true, it is a state of affairs, a fact.
And the relation between them is good old plain material equivalence. If the one is true, so is the other; if the one is false, so is the other.
So what we have here is certainly not a vacillation, but an explication of the relation between a true proposition and a fact.
We might look at an example. I like the kettle.
I don't think this irrelevant, as @Sam26 suggests.
Let's take a look at the bolded bit. Some folk look at it and see it as representing or naming a fact. To them the fact is a seperate thing that is not a string of words, but a state of affairs in the world. For them the bit in bold models or represents or somehow stands for the fact. They insert an interpretive step between the bolded bit and the boiling kettle.
If you ask them what the fact is, the will say it is something like that the kettle is boiling, apparently oblivious to the redundancy of that expression: the bolded bit stands for the fact that the kettle is boiling...
I don't think that this conjured extra step is needed. Here's an alternate account.
The bolded thing is a duck-rabbit. It can be seen as a string of words, but to someone who understands the use, it is also the fact, the state of affairs that the kettle is boiling.
The bolded bit does not name or refer to a fact, as if facts are things in the world. It names or refers to the kettle and the boiling. The fact that the kettle is boiling is not distinct from the bolded bit.
Now I think this is what Davidson is getting at in the bit I seem to keep quoting:
The bolded bit is not a scheme that is seperate from the world.
Now I think this seperate form our previous discussions of truth. I insist that what you call prelinguistic truths or beliefs can be put into propositional form. But I'm tiered of that argument, and hope we might leave it as moot.
Same.
The process of radical interpretation that you describe here forms part of what I called the "mechanics" of Davidson's program. The question "what more could you need?" applies after the mechanism has done its work. You yourself set out how to turn a hand flipped under a chin into a statement by setting out a description of the event.
Perhaps we can be put in terms of translating a document from one language to another. Once you have a first translation, you can ask what is present in the original that is not found in the translation, and then add it to the translation. The process is iterative. And the language into which it is translated need not be a first order extensional logic in order for this process to occur. Two natural languages will do.
(I'm not exactly sure what Davidson's attitude was to his original project of translating English into a first order language, in his latter years. It certainly is not explicit in those writings, but i don't think he entirely gave it away.)
Quoting fdrake
Indeed. In other words, on the assumption that what can be said, can be said.
What more do you need? :wink:
No, that is the point; we know that all our identifications and definitions are static abstractions derived from, filtered from so to speak, our actual experience which is an evershifting succession of images and impressions. Our experience is the territory and the model we have evolved of the world of facts and things is our map, and as the old saw goes 'the map is not the territory'.
The map is tied to the territory by long consideration, historically speaking, of human experience, and conjecture about it, and its meaning, and so forth. But we cannot discursively set the map and territory side by side so to speak to examine the connections, whether purported to be rational or in some sense merely physical, between them.
But we don't need to do that anyway, since our experience generally makes sense to us, and we are able to cope more or less effectively in the world, which is shown by the fact that we would soon perish if we could not.
Quoting creativesoul
So, the rug is not pulled out from under our analysis, because our analysis is justified by its functionality, not by any ultimate rational ground; which would be impossible in any case, since our static identifications and descriptions cannot ever be anything more than approximations to a dynamic lived experience.
Our propositions cannot be seen to correspond to that dynamic lived actuality, but only to our perceptions and conceptions of what is the case that have been spun out of it. So if we are critiquing truth as correspondence insofar as it cannot achieve the former feat, then we are correct, but if we quell that expectation and, more modestly, understand truth as correspondence only to achieve the latter, then we can be well justified.
Could you explain how this is not correspondence?
Semantics for sentence fragments, imperatives, tones, wails, murmurs. SEP notes about formal approaches to semantics(specifically Montague's):
At most you get a construction which tells you lists of sentences equivalent to a given sentence. It will tell you nothing about the world or why things are in the place they are in. It will tell you nothing about why norms of language use imbue the use of language with expressive regularities, what it means for a statement describing an observation to be true in a social sense and true in a scientific one. That list is not exhaustive. If this doesn't already show you there's more to be said, I don't think you want to see it (for the purposes of the argument anyway).
Quoting Banno
Set out "Your partner's love"'s meaning with a t-sentence then! I've answered your challenge, only fair you do the same... Or explain coherently why you cannot.
The bolded bit doesn't correspond to a fact, it is a fact.
Quibbling on it, is it identical to a fact or is it equivalent to one? Given that we already know the RHS is not the world, it's a proposition.
Quoting fdrake
And the Lagomorpha Oryctolagus cuniculus is a Anatidae.
There's a whole theory about the relationship of the RHS to the world which needs to be exposited for that demonstration to go through!
Only if the most you get from an English translation of War and Peace is a lists of sentences equivalent to ????? ? ???.
Is there a difference between a proposition being identical to a fact and being equivalent to a fact?
:grin:
But you don't need an extensive theory to understand that the kettle is boiling. Making tea is a way of life.
I think so. Imagine that "x" is true iff P and "y" is true iff P, then "x" and "y" are truth functionally equivalent but not necessarily identical. Another analogy, if you relabelled all the integers by writing them upside down, but kept the laws of arithmetic the same, that structure would be equivalent to the standard integers with arithmetic, but not identical because the set of symbols differ. Equivalence is weaker than identity.
Another example, "corresponds to the same fact" would be an equivalence relation on statements which could correspond to facts, but they wouldn't have to be the same statement. Like "water is H2O" and "water is dihydrogen oxide". : D
To make a proposition identical to a worldly item or event is a much harder endeavour than to say it's somehow equivalent to one.
This describes is the relationship between the left- and right-hand sides of a T sentence, not the relationship between the right-hand side and the world.
Absolutely. And it's the identity of the right hand side and the world which is at stake.
I think there's a difference, or at least a reason to be suspicious of one. When you disquote a sentence, you still end up with a sentence. But when you go and do stuff, you can't grab a sentence. "fdrake boiled the kettle" is true iff fdrake boiled the kettle. Is the RHS identical with my boiling of the kettle or is it equivalent to it? To put it another way, is the RHS of the statement there ""fdrake boiled the kettle" is true iff fdrake boiled a kettle"" literally identical to my boiling of the kettle? And if it is, why haven't I made my bedtime tea yet?
Eh, an understanding that the RHS of the T-sentence is identical to the world is a metaphysical position, it would be demonstrated by an argument in philosophy. I'm fairly sure people have been quibbling about whether Davidson is an anti-realist or a realist or whether he breaks the distinction for years for this reason!
Then you agree that we aren't expecting to be able to define truth.
How would it imply relativism? I'm not seeing it.
Yes, I see. And that is the objection I've had to @Pie's position from the outset - that the truth bearer, P, is not identical to the fact that P describes. So P is not identical with the world, otherwise we are still talking about a sentence. But if we maintain the distinction between sentence and world, and if P is equivalent to the world, then I don't see how that's different to correspondence.
If the use of "is true" is equivalent to endorsing a statement, or if "p is true" is equivalent to the assertion of "p", then what is true is whatever statement someone asserts or endorses. No?
If someone endorses P, we know they would say P is true. P might subsequently be determined to be false. People would say it was always false.
Redundancy says the truth predicate plays a social role and nothing else.
I see what you mean I think! Would like to see a discussion on how the RHS relates to the world, and how it differs to correspondence.
As I've said already, I think the RHS relates to the world, but the world is a perceptually and conceptually evolved static collective representation, not a dynamic lived experience. I mean we can say the world is a dynamic lived experience, sure, but that saying is just another part of the common conception. All our discursive lives revolve in that static conception, except insofar as it it comes to life for each of us in the vividness of our lived experience, which can never be adequately conceptually explicated due to the loss of life such explication entails.
How?
Quoting Tate
Doesn't that make truth relative to a person or society?
The problem is that the RHS can be false. It's not the world in any sense.
Say a scientist asserts that T. Rex didn't have feathers. Later, it comes to light that they did.
Quoting Luke
I wouldn't use the word "relative" because that implies an inflated version of truth. There are different types of deflation, though.
Could you say more about "comes to light"? Is the falsity of T due to a lack of correspondence between T and the world, for example?
With redundancy, "truth" is just a social sign that generally means endorsement. Correspondence isn't involved. Redundancy is basically saying there's no such thing as truth as people usually conceive it.
Where correspondence is involved, that's not deflationary.
Can you rephrase that? I don't understand.
Right, but then for what reason would scientists - or anyone else - ever change their minds about anything? I don't believe that scientists just decide on a whim that T is false all of a sudden, for no reason.
We don't experience the world, we experience images and sensations, and due to pattern, repetition and recognition, and in conjunction with communication with others and received culture, we form a "picture" of the world with all its facts and relations. This static picture is not our lived experience but the idea of what exists in general and in common, and it is to this static factual picture: the world, that all our propositions correspond, or not.
They found evidence that supports the belief that they had feathers. But say the original scientist isn't buying it and now there's a conflict.
Opposing statements are being endorsed. We non scientists don't know who's right, so we'll have to suspend use of the truth predicate until it's settled.
In all of this, truth is just playing a social role. Nothing more.
I see what you're saying, though. I think there are other kinds of deflation that might be compatible with relativism.
You're saying the world is an idea. In what sense could it be false?
How else can you know that the one is not the other if not by performing a comparison/contrast between the two purportedly distinct things? In order to compare the two things, you have to know what they both are. The problem, of course, is that you've defined the one in such a way as to suggest that it is impossible to know what it is.
The position reminds me of Kant's Noumena, or any other position that denies direct perception.
Earlier you said it was difficult to talk about these things. I found it to be much easier after abandoning those kinds of frameworks.
If the truth or falsity of T is dependent on the evidence, then it would seem to me that evidence has everything to do with correspondence, because you are talking about a correspondence relationship between a proposition, T, and the way the world is. If a fossil, for example, shows that T Rex had feathers, then what makes the proposition false - the falsemaker - that "T Rex didn't have feathers" is the fossil evidence not corresponding to the proposition.
Quoting Tate
What would make any of them "right"? Presumably, that they correctly (correspondingly) describe how the world is, or was.
Quoting Tate
What kinds of deflation are incompatible with relativism?
Redundancy says truth or falseness is a sign of endorsement or rejection. Justification for endorsement is a different issue.
Therefore, evidence and being "right" are irrelevant to truth. So how can truth be anything but relative?
I'm not saying the world as a whole could be false, but that even some things which are taken to be facts might turn out to be inconsistent with subsequent experience.
Quoting creativesoul
How do I know the world is not my experience? It is self-evident. My experience is a constant succession of ideas, associations, images, sounds, feelings and impressions. The world is a static schema of the totality of facts, things and relations.
Facts give the meaning of true sentences?
I don't see the benefit in what you're doing. Maybe I do not understand.
Getting rid of the distinction between scheme and world sounds right to me, but I suspect for very different reasons than you hold. Belief consists of both external and internal elements. That cannot be made sense of if one divorces belief(scheme) from the world. Belief about trees includes trees. Divorcing the two leads to sense datum and all that sort of garbage instead of keeping us directly connected to the world.
How can you know that if you cannot access it, if your perception and conceptions cannot have purchase on it?
Our perceptions and conceptions evolve out of experience, individually and collectively. We know that we experience images, we never perceive whole things, and we never perceive the world at all, but just images of the objects we understand to constitute it. We have conceptual purchase on the world just because it is our idea, we certainly don't have experiential purchase on any such totality.
I do.
Here's a version of Banno's Davidson's Wittgenstein.
Let's say there's a (non-linguistic) state of affairs A that could obtain in the world, and a statement S that describes that state of affairs.
If you want to say that A obtains, how would you say that? You'd use S. Asserting S is exactly how you claim that A obtains in the world. And the statement S is true (asserted or not) if, and only if, the state of affairs A obtains.
What remains is to specify what this "S describes A" business amounts to, beyond saying "S describes what S describes."
Here things get Murky.
One element here is that we must be capable of recognizing that A obtains or doesn't, and, for many sorts of states of affairs, there's no reason to think we humans are uniquely capable of recognizing that such a state of affairs obtains. Lots of creatures know when it's raining; some are more finely attuned to shifts in the microclimate than we are. So this should be an uncontroversial freebie. (Of course it's not actually that simple, because of all the questions of how we conceptualize A, how we take A as something for which S might be appropriate, or the "always already interpreted" business that suggests our access to A is inherently mediated by S's and such. However that works out, you'll still get to say we recognize A's, so that's that.)
But when it comes to the other element, there will be a temptation to reverse the analysis above. Above I said that if we wish to inform someone that A obtains, we will reach for S because S describes A. But it is possible to say that what's really going on is that we reach for some S-like statement in A-like circumstances, period. We might call that S describing A, but if so, all we can mean by that is that when we want to draw attention to an A we utter an S. It's a parsimonious analysis because all you need is the ability to recognize A situations and to utter S's. We've got both of those, so -- done!
Putting all this together, we find that S is true iff we by and large say something S-like when we perceive ourselves to be in an A-like situation. This is why @Luke suspects that this sort of analysis is just relativism about truth. But that's only if you analyze "S describes A" as above.
It is possible there are alternatives to that analysis, besides of course to the other points sketched in above.
I'm not competent to speak to the program of Davidsonian semantics, but I'm not sure it's been much on display here (possibly anywhere, lately) anyway.
I'll throw in some non-analytic chit chat.
That sort of analysis ought to look familiar. It's in the shape of the cloud that hangs over pretty much all mid-20th century Anglo-American philosophy of language, the emblematic moment of which is Quine's remark that when it comes to linguistics, you have no choice but to be a behaviorist. The only sort of linguistic research he could imagine looks either like ethnography or like question and answer sessions, which only yield reports from language users.
As things turned out, cognitive science is quite real, and Quine could not have been more completely wrong.
But in the meantime, we have decades of carefully crafted language-centric philosophy that makes all sorts of quasi-behaviorist assumptions, if not always about the facts (about which you can claim to be agnostic), then certainly about methodology. Wittgenstein, Dummett, Quine, Sellars, Davidson, it's everyone. All that work is far from useless, but we have to make an effort to separate their presumptions about what could be said about language and language users from their putting those presumptions to work in creative and illuminating ways.
Is this according to deflationism?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Maybe this, but also that deflationism does away with truthmakers. As I understand it, deflationism supposes that there is nothing that informs or justifies our claims to truth except for the claims themselves. And I don’t believe that’s how the word “truth” is typically used.
Nuh.
Starts out wrong with non-linguistic states of affairs and goes down hill from there.
Quoting Janus
You posited an actual world then clearly stipulated a forbidden access/purchase to/upon that actual world. You then posited your experience as another entity completely unto itself as distinct from the aforementioned 'prelinguistic actual world'. If we have no access to that world, if our words cannot gain purchase upon it, then we cannot possibly compare anything to it.
In order to know the difference between the two, we must have access to both. You've already said that we cannot. That is a problem called untenability.
Quoting Banno
Is an “empirical fact” a linguistic state of affairs?
In line with your earlier distinction here, I believe that what @Srap Tasmaner meant by a “(non-linguistic) state of affairs” is a state of affairs which is not a piece of language, but which is an empirical fact(s).
I agree that language less belief can be put into propositional form. That's how we present it to one another. Our ability to render language less belief into propositional form says nothing about the meaningful content of the language less belief aside from it is part of our shared world(clearly a plus), and thus we can talk about it. Trees and mice and spatiotemporal relationships are part of the world we share with Jack and Cookie, as are food bowls and food.
No problems with privacy or mental anything.
Looks a lot like a cool marble from a vantage point far enough away in space. We have pictures. I'm surprised you haven't seen one. Maybe you've forgot? Up close it looks like trees and mice and stuff. We have pictures of that too. Pretty unremarkable really when you think about it.
This a "No uninterpreted reality" thingybob?
From On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.
I posited an actuality we experience; i didn't say it is an actual world. I said that the world is a collective representation that we do have discursive, but not direct perceptual access, to. In other words the world is not an object of perception but a complex conceptual schema.
LOL, I wasnt talking about the Earth.
This approach has the advantage of at least spelling out correspondence, I'd say. The world is, indeed, English-shaped (or concept-shaped, I suspect) so matching is a matter of equality (or perhaps another specifiable relation?) between the concept believed and the world.
Then the world is something like a set rather than a place. It's the set of things that are taken to be facts?
The RHS is an element of this set?
Well said. The subtleties can be finessed.....but generally, well said.
Quoting fdrake
What exactly are you saying there, @Banno?
All I did was stipulate a name for something that may not have had a name.
Surely there are objects in the world besides words and sentences. That's as much as I meant by "non-linguistic". Your kettle is not identical to the phrase "Banno's kettle" and is not a token of the word "kettle", it's a kettle, a non-linguistic object. No?
Was it "state of affairs" that you objected to?
I think I probably gave mine earlier, but...
I don't see any mechanism by which we could possibly investigate (or draw conclusions about) what 'truth' is other than by looking at the ways the word is used.
Clearly, a pure redundancy is untenable. People use the word in some cases and not in others so unless they do so at random, we ought conclude that something separates the times when they do from the times when they don't.
When do people use 'true'?
To add emphasis to a statement of belief. To convey certainty. To convey trust. To add social weight to their opinion. As a stick to beat their opponents...
Therein, I'd say, are the meanings of 'true' and there's nothing more to truth than what the word means.
People are sensitive about 'truth' entirely because of that last use. They don't want their stick taken away.
Marvin tells the king the barbarians are within the walls.
The king asks Jack if that's true.
To me, the simplest way to understand that is that the king is asking, not about Marvin's words, but about what Marvin's words are about, the non-linguistic (gonna use this as often as possible now) barbarians inside our non-linguistic walls wielding genuine non-linguistic axes and other tools of mayhem.
You might prefer to say the king is asking Jack if he agrees. Or, asking if Jack's model agrees with Marvin's to the extent of making similar predictions. Sure. Jack is not a divine oracle, just a guy. But what are these predictions about? You'll want to say it's future states of the model -- that the king is at risk of expecting great loss of blood from the perceived axe in his face, and having that expectation confirmed, just as his model stops running and updating.
I don't really want to hop off @Banno's hobby horse just to hop onto yours, midstream no less, but to my mind that misses the whole point of the word "model," a thing that changes in a way appropriate to it when the thing it's a model of changes in the way appropriate to it. We don't have models, not in science, not in our heads, only to make predictions about what our models will do, but to make predictions about what what we're modeling will do.
Sorry -- I shouldn't be lecturing you right off the bat (maybe later) -- consider it an extended "hello".
But here's a question. is this adaptive-predictive-model sort of view (which is in a poor neighborhood of the city where your actual views live) automatically incompatible with the usual understanding of truth and knowledge, or must something be added to it?
Suppose I collect marbles in a big jar and have fashioned a clicker so that each time a marble is dropped in the jar a counter advances. I have a very simple model of my marble collection that captures only the total quantity. But it does actually capture that, doesn't it? So long as the clicker is properly designed and works as designed, and there are no confounding factors like a hole in the bottom of the jar, my model faithfully represents my collection with respect to quantity. That it is a model, that it substitutes one medium for another, that it is representational, doesn't automatically mean that words like "truth" and "knowledge" are only expressions of confidence does it?
So what gets you from, ahem, the model of predictive modeling to everything being a matter of confidence, narrative, and so on? I honestly don't know what you can say here except that it's your knowledge of how our clickers work, and that they're known to be less accurate and less precise than my marble counter.
Here are two versions of an argument that rather than undermining the traditional understanding of knowledge and truth, partial belief accounts rely on them.
If I'm presented with an urn containing 9 black marbles and 1 white, and asked to reach in and grab one, without looking, then, if I'm rational, my degree of confidence that the marble I pick will be black is 0.9. What is the content of the belief I hold with a confidence of 0.9? That the marble is, in fact, black. I don't know any other way of expressing partial belief except as partial belief about what is in fact the case. In this case, I hold that my confidence should be 0.9 because I know, for a fact, how many marbles are black and how many are white. If I don't know that, upon what would I base my partial belief? If I don't have knowledge but only estimates, those are estimates of how many there actually are, and estimates are better or worse depending on how close they are to being the actual number.
When Frank Ramsey ingeniously measures his confidence that he knows the way to town by wondering how far into a field he'd be willing to walk to ask for directions -- the mother of all "put a number on it"s --to make any use of that, he has to know the result of his imaginary experiment. How far, even roughly, would he walk? There has to be a truth of the matter, even if it comes with error bars, for him to refer back to, or the experiment is a waste of time. In addition to the issue of measuring, there's the issue, as above, of what he's measuring, his confidence that the town is this way; what he's uncertain about is whether he knows which way it is.
We can't conceivably begin to talk about theories or predictions or models if we're unwilling to call anything data.
My point is simply that he feels he needs to address the liar paradox, viz., that our everyday language is insufficient.
Quoting Banno
They're irrelevant to our social uses of propositions as they correspond to facts. We don't need to understand Tarski to understand the relationship between propositions and the world. It would be odd if we did. I can see the attraction to 'p' is true, IFF p, but, again, I don't see a need for it.
Although, I do feel the need for speed. :gasp:
...then why ask Marvin? Surely he knows that in doing so he can only be asking Marvin's opinion about the barbarians... which Marvin has already given. 'True' here might mean {'Are you sure?'}, or maybe to re-emphasise {'You're gonna get it in the neck if you're wrong!'}, or even {'You're joking, right?'}.
I don't see how anyone aware of how perception works could think that adding a word magically causes Marvin to directly relate the actual position of the actual barbarians in a way that just asking wouldn't have done.
I can see what you mean about the straightforward appeal of saying that when we ask 'Is it true?' we're asking if the world is indeed that way. But what then do we make of asking 'Is the cat on the mat?' Is that not asking how the world is? and if so, then what additionally is 'Is it true?' asking.
If anything, I can see more of a case for 'Is the cat on the mat?' being about the world and 'Is "the cat is on the mat" true?' being about confidence, certainty, or trust.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree. We model the world and the subject of our sentences is the world (not the model). So when I ask 'Is the cat on the mat?' I'm asking about both cat and mat in the actual world, the one which I'm modelling. But I'm not sure how this translates to asking 'Is "the cat is on the mat" true?
The question at hand is not, for me, 'is there an actual cat and an actual mat?' I'm quite sure there is an actual world we're modelling (though we may be wrong about it, of course), but the question is 'what does the word 'true' do in the sentences in which we use it?' Does it somehow tie the sentence to the world any more than the unadorned sentence? I don't think it does. Does it add emphasis? It seems to.
So yes, there's an actual world that is the object of our models, but is that what we mean by 'true' and 'truth'? I don't think so.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well...depends how far you want to get into the constructed reality stuff. I'm not as far gone as some. But by and large, you have a model of how your clicker works. It coheres with your model of your marbles in their jar. In what way is the clicker (and your model of how it counts marbles) any better a measure than the other way round? If you were sure your jar contained 60 marbles, but your clicker has it at 59 is the model of the jar wrong, or the model of how the clicker works?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. If you and I, and a dozen others, were trying to 'mind-read' how many marbles there were in the jar in the next room, we don't need to actually know how many marbles there 'really' are to know that we cannot 'mind-read'. All we need is for you to say '59', me say '27', and everyone else some other number. It become apparent that we cannot mind-read the contents of the jar. We can know this without ever checking what's in the jar. [hide="Reveal"]With lots of caveats about our models of how jars can only contain one quantity of marbles at any one time - this is still all about coherence.[/hide]
So, likewise, we only need look at how perception works (specifically the differences between people) to have a good idea that the world we're trying to model is something other than we model it to be (unless by luck, one of us is spot on).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That proceeding under a policy of assuming it's black will yield fewer surprises.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Your prior model. You base your belief on your priors. So if your prior model had a 90% confidence that working under a policy of assuming the marble is black will yiedl fewest surprises, then, unless updated by some actual surprise, that's the policy you'll proceed under.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, I think that's right. The constraints the world places on our options are revealed in the surprise (or lack of it) resulting from proceeding under a policy of assuming the world is that way.
One difference here from the direct realist is that the world only constrains our options. Nothing prevents two models from both being good if neither are constrained by the world such as to yield surprising outcomes when followed.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Does he? Or does he only need move on to the next experiment - an experiment about how confident he is regarding what the results of the previous experiment was.
I don't see any requirement fo this so terminate in anything more concrete than the beliefs are in the first place. Quinean webs of belief (as I'm sure you're familiar with). Why must one of them be the actual data?
Under a policy of assuming what? That it is black. You're saying the same thing I did but in language that sounds more scrupulous.
Quoting Isaac
FWIW, I had the king asking Jack if what Marvin said was true. I did not have the king thinking that
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
And here again, you have actual priors right? Was it really 90% or was it, like maybe any other number at all? And what is the content of that prior? That the actual marble is black. And your beliefs have to be updated by actual surprise? Or is that only what you, perhaps erroneously, modeled as surprise? Shouldn't you be consulting your model of your model? Is there ever any actual input? Or is it an infinite tower of models?
*
Honestly, though, I need to have a think about what this argument is even supposed to show. Is it the "conceptual priority" of knowledge to belief? Am I claiming that no position claiming to cash out everything in terms of beliefs, with no knowledge claims, is even intelligible? I'd really rather argue something else because we still seem to be locked in this bubble of arguing about concepts and assertibility. I'm pretty tired of those kinds of arguments.
Do you think the world that constrains our models is separable from the measurement apparatus we use to observe it, and the methods of interpreting those measurements, both of which are products of our models? Do we not erect structures of intelligibility we call ‘the world’ , structures that give us specific ways of knowing our way around? Are cats and mats inside or outside the structures we erect? Does it makes any sense at all to talk about what is outside our structures of intelligibility, which , as contributions to the world , are themselves empirical entities and the only ones we are ever in contact with?
Can we say, then, that e correctness or incorrectness of ‘the cat is on the mat’ only ever makes sense from within a structure of intelligibility rather than as a comparison of that structure with some constraint wholly outside of it?
Can't please anyone round here can I? Too idealist for the hard-nosed realists, too realist for the hard-nosed idealists...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You're giving it's being black a different status to the belief (or so it seemed). Something's 'being black' is just saying that we're proceeding under a policy of treating it as black. There's the policy (the assumption, the behaviour) and there's the cause of that policy. The cause is hidden (necessarily so, otherwise it would be part of 'us' and it's be something outside of that we'd be creating a model of). The policy is not.
We talk about the cause. 'A black marble' is my word for the thing I'm modelling as a black marble, it's not my word for the model. But epistemically, all I have is the model, not the black marble. I act according to the policy, not the actual marble. My actions are constrained by the actual marble, it limits what policy I can act under (regarding it), but being constrained by the marble and being caused by (or otherwise directly connected to) the marble are two different things.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
My bad. Same applies, he can only ever be asking for Jack's opinion. He's surely not thinking Jack can somehow provide him with unmediated contact with the location of the barbarians, it must be filtered through Jack's biases, errors, misrememberings... The King knows this. So when he asks 'Is that true?', either he's lost his mind, or he's asking if Jack agrees (with emphasis - he's not asking for a guess).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, basically.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think here we can circumvent the usual stuff about models. Here I think the argument about truth stands only on the basis of what people can possibly be using the word for. If they're using the word to get at the 'real world', then why wasn't the original unadorned proposition about that in the first place?
If I ask "is 'the cat is on the mat' true?" why am I only now asking about correspondence in a way I apparently wasn't with "is the cat on the mat?"
Quoting Joshs
No, I don't. But I don't think a theory that the world constrains our models is itself constrained by our lack of ability to measure those constraints outside of our modelling assumptions.
Quoting Joshs
I think so, yes. 'cats' and 'mats' are just labels, words... we can label things which we can't directly perceive. I can label the planet orbiting Alpha Centuri 'Bob' and we can then talk about the atmosphere of 'Bob'. 'Bob' doesn't even need to exist for such a conversation to be functional. So the fact that I'm modelling a cat (and your model of it might be different), it doesn't prevent us from using a word to refer to {the thing you and I are modelling}, we don't even need to know we're both modelling the same hidden states. As long as the conversation works, that's all that it needs.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, absolutely. The whole game of 'correct' and 'incorrect' is a construction too.
And I'm saying that's incoherent. We can't treat things as black if we don't have the concept of something being black, so there's no way of explaining being as assuming ((clarifying edit)). This is Sellars's argument about "looks" from EPM, and I see no way around it.
That gets me conceptual priority, but I'm not sure that's what I want.
Quoting Isaac
The horror! The horror!
Quoting Isaac
Not me. I think that's a different subject, interesting in its own right, but not all questions are about how we use words. To hell with that.
By the way, I liked this:
Quoting Isaac
That's a really nice question. I'm trying to avoid knee-jerk responses to it, so no answer yet, but it's on my mind.
Really?
"If a thing is a 'jabberwocky', you ought throw jelly at it."
Don't you now know how to treat something as a jabberwocky? (Ie throw jelly at it)
At no point in that did you need a concept of what a jabberwocky actually is.
Treating something 'as being black'. Is like this. A set of behaviours (including mental ones) - reaching for the word 'black', recalling your recent space voyage, not giving it fair access to the justice system (political!). There's a cluster of behaviours we'd recognise in others as them 'acting as if x was black'. I'm suggesting there's nothing more to a thing being black than us being prepared to act that way, to adopt those policies.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Entirely appropriate response. Nonetheless...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Thanks. Probably ought to take a leaf from your book regarding the jerking of the knee.
I look forward to your thoughts.
If that were the case, then there would be no substantive difference between illusions of trees and perception of trees.
Sam, do you think our everyday language is insufficient for explaining the Liar and/or all its permutations?
I don't think @Banno sees it like this, but I think Davidson is quite close to Kant on this 'access to exterior reality' point. Language plays a regulative and limiting role in what can be expressed, and it's also practical and publicly negotiated. It's sort of like a communally constituted, constantly evolving conceptual scheme that 'blocks' intelligible access to a presumably "non-linguistic" shared reality. There's a veil, but it's not a veil of perception on the nature of things, it's a veil shared conduct places on what is intelligible. It smells a lot like transcendental idealism. "There is no uninterpreted reality" is extremely close in spirit to "all experience is governed by a conceptual scheme". There's just one diffuse, distributed, constantly evolving regime of intelligibility which is equivalent to shared patterns of language, and it's linked to the world through truth.
I think this approach is in line with Kant, with Wittgenstein's "the world is the totality of facts..." and with Davidson's proposal to dissolve the distinction between schema and world. It's also always a matter of terminology though; I am not using 'world' to refer to any purported actuality beyond human experience, and I understand that some might use it that way. Using it that way creates the central problem for correspondence theory; if we understand the latter to consist in positing truth as accordance between word and world..
Quoting Tate
The world is understood to be the totality of facts, things and relations. It cannot be a place, because places have locations; where would the world be located? It is not merely a set, because it is understood to be infinitely complex, with parts interrelated. The RHS is a linguistic expression that can be in accordance with, correspond to, this collectively represented world or not.
Quoting Mww
Thanks Mww, I'm interested in any "finessing" you may care to offer.
Quoting creativesoul
Not so, if I see what I take to be a tree, all I have to do is go up to it to feel its bark and leaves, and if I have a pen knife carve my initials in its bark or if I have a saw, cut off a branch, or if I am feeling agile I can climb it. If none of these are possible then I know I am confronted with an illusion, not a tree. That said, such a thing has never happened to me, and I have taken plenty of psychedelics. So, this kind of supposed counterexample is really a red herring in my view.
I think the problem lies in the vagaries of language, and trying to fit language into a very precise medium, like mathematical logic. Logic is a guide for our reasoning, but it has it's limits. The two mediums of logic and ordinary language are very different, and it's this difference that may contribute to the problem.
Ick.
First, that's an argument that we don't need concepts at all. What kind of cognitive psychologist are you? Too much Quine and Wittgenstein in your diet.
Second, absent a concept of jabberwocky-hood, I can't treat anything as a jabberwocky, because for all I know it is a jabberwocky. I am, when it comes to jabberwockies, incapable of pretense.
But suppose, perhaps because I was told to, I throw jelly at something, and do so with the understanding that this is how you treat a jabberwocky. I'm still incapable of inferring that I should pelt something with jelly because I believe, even erroneously, that it is a jabberwocky. And I am incapable of having a disposition to treat anything this way, so you can't even say I'm treating the thing you told me to fling jelly at as I would treat a jabberwocky. And what's behaviorism without dispositions? (A new line for Q-Tip!)
Quoting Isaac
There ya go. This is really interesting. You're determined to sound like a behaviorist philosopher of fifty years ago or more, but you know that's a non-starter, so you push some of that style of analysis "inside." I'm sure there's a way of construing this that's uncontroversial -- neuroscientists are prone to talk about your brain telling you stories and so on, but of course that's largely picturesque; there's no cocoa or blankets involved. So did you mean the word "behaviour" as literally as I thought you might?
Sure. I threw your name in as bait. I wouldn't mind following through on our discussions of the relation between intentional language and neuroscience. One way that might look would be to look at our talk of things being true and the neuroscience of... and here I'm not even sure what to put.
We spoke at one stage of the difference between the sort of non-symbolic modelling that occurs in neural networks, and the ubiquitous, fraught, philosophical notion that our language models the world. The temptation is to simply equate the two, which I think we agree would be a gross oversimplification. I'm well pleased with the argument that when we talk about kettles boiling we are talking about kettles and not neural weightings, and I think you are, too.
Since this thread has frayed into divers and sundry arguments, it's probably not the place. If you are interested, let me know and I will make an attempt to articulate the topic more clearly in a new thread.
I agree, but I wonder about the above statement. It probably depends on how we're using the concepts approximation and exact, i.e., whether we are talking about a scientific measurement using lasers or a measurement using a ruler. However, even a scientific measurement that's considered exact in one setting, will only be an approximation in another setting.
Why not link the linguistic and the pre or non-linguistic, so that we can say it is not language per se that constrains and limits the intelligibility of the world, but each persons’s integrated history of understanding in general that ‘blocks’ some ways of thinking while enabling others? I would argue that the most important superordinate aspects of our ways of understanding the world, those with the greatest potential to limit what is intelligible to us, is often too murky to be linguistically articulated by us, and yet it drives our greatest hopes and fears. I would also add that our discursive schemes are only partially shared, which means that they are contested between us in each usage. Linguistic interchange doesn’t just assume what is at issue, it determines anew what is at issue in the interchange.
Hmm.
Wittgenstein, whom we both admire, took logic as having a crystal clarity, a precision of expression that was not found in ordinary language. Indeed one of the things that separates his approach from the Oxford scholars of the time is that they were more incline to give primacy to the way words are actually used, while Wittgenstein was more inclined to look but then use logic to display any errors in ordinary language. If logic and ordinary language were in conflict, Wittgenstein would presumably take the side of logic.
Of course there are for Wittgenstein truths that are unassailable, for which "if I assume they are false, I must mistrust all my judgements"(Remarks on colour). Their truths are the hinges on which hang our language games.
Now in that quote Wittgenstein is considering truth beyond "our social uses of propositions as they correspond to facts", as you put it.
You do not doubt the truth of T-sentences. I submit that they show the way in which one such hinge swings.
Go read "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" to find out why not!
Interestingly, the use of a laser will carry with it more uncertainty because interpreting the results of a laser requires more theoretical baggage than a ruler. Frequently measurements taken by laser are reported in statistical terms, so that their exactness is specified in a mathematical way, but it's actually a measure of in-exactness.
Basically you'd have to accept a lot more scientific propositions for the laser to work as a tool for measuring than you do for the ruler, which pretty straightforwardly demonstrates length in relation to itself and our basic experience. I accept these propositions, but it's true that the ruler is in ways more exact than the laser because of this.
I read it and think Davidson misses the boat. Sentences don’t link up with perceptual facts in the causal
way that he presumes. Perception is at its core already conceptual through and through , so the perceptual world doesn’t verify word meaning in the grounding way that he thinks it does.
That's pretty plausible, but I wouldn't presume to say what Davidson has chosen not quite to say.
Makes sense! I took too many liberties there.
I'm not faulting you. Davidson is slippery, and it's hard not to think this is deliberate. Williamson refers to his "elliptical and somewhat evasive style." He's like the Steven Moffat or J. J. Abrams of philosophy, always hinting at a payoff that's never going to come. What we get instead, what you can actually get your hands on, I always end up finding pretty shallow. He's just not my guy, and I'm less happy every time I try going back to him, which I surely will again. Maybe next time I'll think he's brilliant.
If I were to talk instead, perhaps for @Sam26's sake, in terms of a form of life in which both kettles and "kettles" participate, the one making no sense without the other, would that help? Talk of kettles makes sense only in making tea, lighting fires, pouring water, seeing steam.
But if I say there are no "non-linguistic states of affairs" (your term, not mine) I'm apparently vacillating.
Yet it seems to me that Davidson, in talking about the "unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false" is not at all in disagreement with Wittgenstein here.
(And again, that is what @creativesoul misses in his account.)
So there are two questions remaining. Are truth sentences wrong? And if ordinary language were in disagreement with logic, with which would Wittgenstein side?
Quoting Sam26
I don't think it is explicitly used, not as it was in the Tractatus. Elsewise one would be accusing Wittgenstein of imprecision. :gasp:
All this to make the point that logic remained central to Wittgenstein's thinking.
It seems to me that perception must be conceptually mediated even for animals insofar as it seems that animals are capable of "seeing as". This ties in with Gibson's idea of "affordances"; that the environment provides animals with means of survival that must be recognized. To re-cognize would seem to mean seeing and responding to recurring perceptual patterns. Fully articulated this ability to recognize leads to generalities and categories.
I agree with you that the most basic (pre-linguistic) ways of understanding what is experienced (I won't say "the world") cannot be linguistically articulated, and that discursive schemes are only partially shared: each individual has their own unique set of of associations, images, impressions and feelings which make up their experience, and that these give rise to our primordial hopes and fears, which themselves are impossible to adequately articulate. The partially shared nature of our discursive schemes, what I would refer to as general vagueness and/ or ambiguity ensures that there is room for as much misunderstanding as there is understanding between us...a constant process of renegotiating ideas.
I was thinking of ambiguity, and the fuzziness of our categories. We generally get by, though.
You will take my point: logic remains primary in Wittgenstein.
There's nothing in reality that is internal nor external; there's just the stuff we talk about.
I'm going to give you a hard time about this, not because I care about you attributing agency to non-persons for purposes of rhetorical grace, but because I want to know what locution you avoided using there.
Quoting Banno
And now we're back to them being non-persons -- I think. But you could here mean, as you said, that they wouldn't make sense, or you could mean that their behavior wouldn't make sense. The difference matters because one of those things is a word and one of them isn't. If you want to erase the distinction, do that, but do it explicitly.
Quoting Banno
Okay now a kettle is something we talk about, and it's our talk that may or may not make sense. Above you included both kettles and "kettles" -- or they included themselves -- but here, even as you describe activities that involve kettles, you reach for "talk of kettles." Why? Following all those steps to make tea is not "talk of kettles." But somehow even that seems like "kettles" business to you. What happened to the kettles? Can't how someone uses a kettle also make sense or not? Is that the same kind of sense that talk of kettles makes?
No, I will not take your point in the way you seem to be making it. It depends on what Wittgenstein is talking about. You do not see the use of logic in the same way it's used in his early philosophy, where logic is primary. He's much more flexible in his later philosophy, not as dug in, in terms of using logic as a primary tool.
Though only a bit. One of the reasons I've adopted my stance on truth is because of stuff like that -- the things we usually take to be exact (sciences) are exact, but only in their own way and with qualifications and all that. Science produces truths -- but those truths are linguistic and embedded within a network of practices and beliefs. (and, given my usual feelings on science, that translates to other fact-invested ways of producing knowledge)
I definitely agree that truth is linguistic, and thus embedded in our forms of life.
Are you carving your initials into a tree or your perception, conception, and/or impressions?
I would agree.
It is all perception: I perceive trees, carving my initials, climbing and so on.
What kind of opposition is that?
You could have finished "there's just the stuff that is," or "there's just the stuff we say is inside or outside," but you end up here: x isn't internal or external; x is something we talk about. How is that not just a non sequitur?
Creativesoul asked:
Quoting creativesoul
What I meant is that seeing a tree, feeling its bark and leaves, carving your initials into it, climbing it and so on are all perceptual.
Cool. I guess my thought at the moment is with respect to this actuality stuff and its relationship to facts. Facts are the stuff of science. But they are created -- rather than lying there for us to discover, we invent a lot to make them useful for ourselves. Actuality doesn't change with the facts -- facts are generated by our interaction with actuality, though.
So it related to my notion that facts just are true sentences -- so maybe not a disagreement on truth, on our part, but maybe on facts? Though I could just be mixing up your and @Luke 's view too.
I choose not to talk about the stuff we can't talk about...
You may do as you will.
Ya, they're all sensory experiences. You're not saying it's all subjective are you?
I'm glad you knew what I meant!
Your notion of a fact is a bit different from mine. I talked about facts in my summary of truth a few pages back.
First, it must be acknowledged that truth is a continuum, it is non-binary (If you doubt this, consider the claim "X has $10000 in their bank account. This is true if X has $10000 or $9990, mostly true if X has $9500, not at all true if X has $50).
Every proposition P proposes not a possible world, but rather a ;large or infinite set of possible worlds. This is the only way language can work, since reality is very fine grained, whereas language is very coarse.
P is true if the actual world is one among that set of possible worlds P means, or if the distance between the actual world and the nearest possible world of P is negligible. The degree of truth declines as the actual world recedes from the cloud of possible worlds meant by P.
The same is true of the interpretation of P. An interpretation is valid if the possible world(s) the interpretation represents is contained by or closely matches the set of possible worlds which P means,, or if the distance is negligible. The correctness of the interpretation of P declines with it's distance from P.
Good for you. What does that have to do with whether anything is internal or external?
Are you saying that the terms "internal" and "external" make no sense? How can that be? These are common terms used to refer to things which are inside of, or outside a proposed boundary. Internal/external is actually a very useful distinction, in subjects like systems theory for example.
Suppose we do away with this distinction. to just talk about "stuff". How would we ever understand the physical reality of "stuff", and the forces which act on "stuff", if we had no way of distinguishing between what is within a particular piece of stuff that we are trying to understand, and what is outside of that piece of stuff?
Well, from the PI §90's to §136 he does talk quite explicitly about logic, making one of the points you make - that the crystal clarity of logic is put there by us, not discovered.
We are here comming from this:
Quoting fdrake
All the T-sentence does is set out the groundwork of propositions, against which we play as we will with them. As setting out that the king only moves on square at a time is part of the groundwork of chess. It's part of the description of all that pragmatics, not in contrast to it.
Quoting Sam26
The liar is like someone saying "but look, I can move the king more than one space!"
I've no idea - that's your phrasing.
Your asking me to explain your own terminology, a terminology I think doesn't work.
I definitely don't see the liar's paradox as the same as saying, "Look I can move the king more than one space." Although I do use this technique in chess when I'm losing.
That's a common scenario around here.
What?
The exchange is right there. None of this my phrasing.
Quoting Banno
@fdrake mentioned "'access to exterior reality'," and he put scare quotes on it.
I know roughly what he was trying to get at it, but I'm not pressing him for details because it was a broad, speculative post. You seemed to be making a specific point but I don't know what it is.
“The criteria which we accept for ‘fitting’, ‘being able to’, ‘understanding’, are much more complicated than might appear at first sight. That is, the game with these words, their employment in the linguistic intercourse that is carried on by their means, is more involved—the role of these words in our language other—than we are tempted to think. (This role is what we need to understand in order to resolve philosophical paradoxes. And hence definitions usually fail to resolve them; and so, a fortiori does the assertion that a word is ‘indefinable’.)” PI 182.
I don't much like the subjective/ objective framing. I was just pointing out that the absurdity of carving initials on a perception, which creative was attempting to use against what I had said, is inapt since the whole experience: carving, initials, tree and all the rest are all of the same perceptual fabric.
The point, a small one, is that in the Tractatus Witti aims to set ordinary language aright by building a perfect language, then came to see logic as ordinary language use. §131. "This sentence is false" is in English, after all.
It would be absurd to say Witti spurned logic.
I only asked about what you said. Thinking about it on the way home from work, I think I have some idea what you meant, but I'm not going to guess. If you don't want to clarify what you meant, I will live with the disappointment.
I'd still be happy to have some answers about talk of kettles.
Who would say the W. spurned logic? I surely never said such a thing.
It's well that you drew attention to this, since I missed it while out weeding.
But I'm not sure what to say in reply; a form of life involves both words and the stuff we do with them, doesn't it? The Kettle is a part of the form of life. Odd that you should think this as attributing agency to the kettle, but I guess it might work. That is, we don't just talk about kettles, but use them, buy them, plant flowers in them when they become holy.
So I don't understand the question.
Good. So logic is relevant to our discussion. I'm happy to leave this line there. Good night.
Generally, Srap, we seem to talk past each other. I'm not sure we are not saying the same thing, but arguing the expressions used.
:up:
I was just hoping you would be more precise. As it stands, your position is that everything we do and say kinda goes together, and I don't know what use that's supposed to be. Not that I would claim it doesn't all kinda go together, but maybe there is something specific we can say now & then.
Quoting Banno
I don't have any statistics on this, but I think a safer bet would be that I disagree with everything you say.
Well then, I must be wrong...
Heh. Saw what you did there.
I also like this theory of truth quite a lot. I think that it accurately describes how we use the word "true", and avoids distinguishing between "What I think is true" and "What IS true". I don't see how we can know objectively what IS true, and I'm not even convinced that we even want to know what IS true. I also think that mindfulness and meditation can contribute to our understanding of truth. I think that meditation offers me a chance to experience the fundamental building blocks that everything else derives from, and any theory of truth must start from the meditative state of mind.
That joke might serve as an example for the revision theory.
Srap says everything Banno says is wrong.
Banno says "I must be wrong".
First revision: suppose Srap is correct. Then everything Banno says is wrong. Banno said "I must be wrong". Hence Banno is correct.
Second revision: Banno is correct. Then "I must be wrong" is correct. Then Banno is wrong. Srap says Banno is wrong. Hence, Srap is correct.
Third revision: Srap is correct.... and we are back to the first revision...
You get the idea. The truth flip flops with each revision.
I think it's an argument about what concepts are, not whether we need them.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Ha! You'd have hated my theories of 20 years ago. I started out research in social psychology, only moving to cognitive science in the last few years of my academic career. I'm basically a behaviourist masquerading as cognitive scientist in order to get goes on their cooler kit...
Wittgenstein and Quine came even later.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, so treating something as a Jabberwocky is what something's being a Jabberwocky is. Jabberwockies (or kettles, or tables, or teacups...) are not ready-made items, we construct them enactively, we interact with those hidden states and by our interaction construct those boundaries (between kettle and not-kettle).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm not seeing why. You'll have to join the dots. What actually is the concept of a jabberwocky, for you? What kind of thing is it? what properties does it have? You seem to want to invoke it as a necessary piece in the process, but I don't see it's role.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
In all likelihood, yes. I don't know about behaviourist philosophers, but behaviourist psychologists are still very much alive and kicking, there's a difference between Skinnerian behaviourism and methodological behaviourism. The former is (thankfully) dead, but the latter is still bread and butter to a considerable volume of research, my own included.
What we're talking about, at root, is what it is to be an entity at all. What distinguishes an entity from all that is not it. In order to carry out that trick an entity must push against the homogenising force of entropy, it must resist being scattered hither and thither, and maintain, against the odds, it's unity. Right there is behaviour. Not only are we nothing but soup without behaviour, but behaving (acting against the gradient of entropy) is what we are. We are units of anti-entropic behaviour.
In this sense, there's only two relevant questions of cognition - what behaviour is that preparing us for, and what anti-entropic outcome are we expecting from it? The first part is the behaviourism, the second the story-telling.
Yeah, sure. I fear we may well be on our own in such an interest, but I feel the same way from the other side (how the theories of cognitive sciences mesh with those of ordinary language philosophies and their descendants). There seems to be a trend, which I'm not at all on board with, to co-opt cognitive science's models into full blown idealism and/or relativism. It's a struggle, with our current tools, to find a route which keeps those insights that are important to my work (were important, I should say - mustn't pretend I'm not a corporate sell-out now!), yet doesn't fall into, what I see as a trap of assuming something like idealism.
The difference being that we can say what kettles, tables or teacups are, but not so Jabberwockies, it would seem.
This is why "truth" is best defined in terms of honesty. Except for a bunch of epistemologists, who are always looking for more, and are never satisfied, it's how the word is commonly used.
Quoting Banno
Hegelian dialectics? This is called "becoming" and it's like a circle, except it's not a true circle because it's not closed in the sense of the Aristotelian description of a circle. It's more like a spiral.
Then what's the LHS?
Quoting Janus
.....just like that. Such knowledge is given immediately from that which constitutes experience, pursuant to a epistemological theory that proves what experience is and thereby the constituency of it.
Claiming self-evidence is dangerous, though, for, with respect to human cognition, that which is irreducibly self-evident concerns itself with logical form a priori without regard to objects, whereas “world” is an empirical conception a posteriori representing a manifold of all possible objects. In effect, that which is known or knowable, re: a multiplicity/plurality of synthetically derived particulars, is put in conflict with that which is merely thought or conceivable, re: an analytically derived universal.
On the other hand, however, that knowledge, and consequently, experience, of a manifold of infinite possibilities is itself impossible is categorically presupposed, from which it follows that knowledge of the world cannot be experience is necessarily self-evident to pure reason, which is metaphysically transcendental, but not necessarily to judgement, which is cognitively relational.
Make no mistake about it: the notion of “conceptual schema” cannot be divorced from empirical states of affairs. Not for us as humans, operating under the auspices of an intellect that absolutely requires it. And from that necessity, the assertion, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”, taken at face value, is catastrophically false, in that language makes no appearance whatsoever in mere representations of conceptual schema, which in and of themselves alone, are limits of a world. I am limited by what I can think, and that, at least sufficiently, by the laws of rational thought, not by what I can express by symbolic device.
Yeahyeahyeah.....I know: one guy’s finessing is another guy’s nonsense. But, hey.....you asked for it, so, there ya go.
Nothing complicated or subtle. I assumed concepts include at the barest minimum class membership and exclusion: if I have a concept of jabberwocky, then I'm in a position to say, rightly or wrongly, something is or isn't a jabberwocky. Then I can behave toward it in the way I believe appropriate to jabberwockies. I have to have criteria I rely on to reach a decision regarding an entity about whether it's a jabberwocky or not. Those criteria might be characteristics of the thing, but might be as simple as me believing that you possess such criteria even though I don't, and just asking you and trusting your judgment. But that's pretty weak, and doesn't allow me to have my own jabberwocky-specific dispositions.
That all sounds very old-fashioned. I'm sure there are problems there that need fixing. But it's a starting point, and I think something a lot like that should be a consequence of a better theory of concepts.
So described, concepts sound like predicates, and for some cases that's right. But for a long time I've been uncomfortable with the way classical logic is constructed, which treats all sorts of classification as predication of a completely generic x. I think quantification in natural languages is almost always implicitly restricted, so the logical form of "My dog is barking" is not "There is something such that it is a dog and it is mine and it is barking," but, for a start at least, "There is a member of the class my dogs such that, it is barking." I think we handle sortals quite differently from predicates. An entity that is barking might not be. Some entities that are mine might not be. An entity that is a dog is always a dog, and couldn't be, for instance, a lamp of mine that is now on or off.
(Note that's not a defense of ordinary usage against logic, but a claim that classical logic worked fine for mathematics where quantification is usually restricted but has always been an uncomfortable fit for natural languages where the restrictions on quantification tend to be implicit. Modal logics might get me a lot of what I want, dunno.)
That's my beef with classical logic, and it turns out to be relevant here, not just because jabberwocky is a sortal rather than a predicate, but because you're also erasing all the different ways we might reach for to describe entities and calling them all behaviours, and then even identifying the entity itself as a bundle of behaviours. It's behaviours all the way down, with no agents anywhere.
Which means all we ever do now is describe behaviours, and bundles of behaviours, and that makes them the new entities of unrestricted quantification. Which, you know, fine, but I'm going to be uncomfortable.
Quoting Isaac
Well, it's not like philosophy has never been here before. I just find this
Quoting Isaac
a bit of an odd halfway house between ontology and physics. I can totally see the appeal, in a unity-of-science way, of something like this, but you're starting with a lot of conceptual apparatus about entropy and the laws of thermodynamics and all that, and then using that to explain the being of entities. Even @apokrisis (who has a related big story) doesn't try to do that, but starts from a more fundamental metaphysics and then gets the physics out of that, eventuating in the universe of medium sized dry goods.
This is the same conversation we were having about truth. In essence, my claim is that you're cheating, but you don't know it. I'm not convinced there is a coherent account of belief that doesn't rely on knowledge as a separate category, and that implies a genuine category of truth distinct from people's opinions. Since you want to deny just that, you have to smuggle it in. Same sort of thing here: you want to explain being in terms of physics, but that's backwards, so you'll have to smuggle in all sorts of stuff physics needs and not acknowledge it.
One issue that's come up recently in this thread is the extent to which we might project the structure of our thought, particularly its linguistic structure, onto reality. I don't want to get into that here, but note that this is an odd area for scientists, because in everyday work they take an instrumental view -- we've got our models, we don't pretend reality is actually like the model, that's not even the point, the only question is how well the model works, we're pragmatists, and if we think about it at all what we think is that we should be self-consciously agnostic about what's really out there, it doesn't change the work anyway. That position only becomes untenable when working in really fundamental areas. (There's a similar situation in mathematics, where people not working in fundamentals take a whole lot of stuff for granted. Fundamentals is almost a separate field.) It gets harder to take the instrumental view, model over here, thing modeled over there. It gets harder to know what even counts as justification or evidence anymore if you're not even sure what the nature of your model is. (There are physicists who believe fundamental physics has been wandering off course for a while now, but even if they're wrong, that's a genuine possibility.) ----- Point being, you come along, a methodological behaviourist, and tell me, in essence, that it turns out your methodology is literal fact, that it's not just a matter of modeling entities in terms of their behaviour, but that entities just literally are their behavior. Now maybe you're right, and you were terribly lucky to have chosen a methodology that turns out not to be a research strategy but a factual description of the universe -- or maybe, just maybe, you're projecting the structure of your thought onto reality.
Not necessarily use against what you said so much as attempting to makes sense of how the 'actual world' posited earlier fit into the carving. You've also said that we don't see the world, but rather our perceptions, conceptions, impressions, and things of a nature which sound like a denial of direct perception.
Here though, you've posited the tree, and not your conception or perception of the tree, so at least the tree is included. I've little interest in nailing down flaws in people's positions for the sake of exposing them alone, so I'm not going to push on this or make any charges. My replies are more for my own understanding.
Maybe. But I can say that Jabberwokies are tall hairy creatures with purple noses. I can instil in your mind the notion that one might reach for the word 'jabberwocky' on seeing such a thing. I can do all this without jabberwockies having to actually exist.
Your trigger and your response can both exist without the causal object existing.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You seem happy to let factors other than properties of the putative object act as membership criteria - so why not "the thing I treat this way". If I feel inclined to treat it thus, then it's a jabberwocky. Does that not serve as sufficient criteria?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well, at least I'm only taking a pop at some form of naive realism, I think the target on your back is bigger than that on mine if you want to take down classical logic...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Classic John Hegley monologue seems fitting here, I'll paraphrase for brevity...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm not sure what you mean by 'unrestricted quantification'? All I'm saying is that it's difficult not to see us as a cluster of behaviours. It's simply that without behaving we'd decay, we resist the entropic gradient, that's we are a distinguishable something and not a sea of homogeneous soup.
You could have kettles and teapots as objects apart form our behaviour toward them, but what would that mean for them to be so? what would it mean for the boundary between teapot and ~teapot to be thus and not thus other than our treating it so? Even for you to declare it to be is some behaviour, no?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah. I think that's fair. But I don't see any grounds for a kind of 'order of events' with regards to lining up one's presuppositions. Is there a reason why metaphysics must proceed physics when ensuring one's presuppositions cohere?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't see why. In order to think we have to have brains, but that doesn't mean we can't then revise our understanding of how we think with our empirical data about how brains work. Likewise, just because we must exist prior to learning about physics, I don't see why our knowledge of that physics shouldn't then form part of our narratives regarding what that existence is all about.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
But that's exactly what I'm doing. Exactly what everyone is doing. How are they not? How is anyone not constructing their reality from the priors their 'methodology' hands them? With what would one construct reality otherwise?
All we have, absent our methodological assumptions, is an unfiltered sea of raw data and noise.
I may or may not be one of those philosophers, but I do think common language is capable of being precise enough. Language can be honed.
For example, the terms/adjectives "linguistic" "non-linguistic" and "pre-linguistic" have been employed in this discussion by a variety of different individuals. Those uses were mainly talking about kinds of facts or something like that. For different reasons in the past, I used them myself, because they seemed like a commonsense easily understood distinction. I wanted to draw and maintain a meaningful distinction between language less creatures' belief and language users' belief. Naturally, I saw the difference to be language. So, I began by saying that language less animals have non-linguistic(or pre-linguistic) belief and language users have linguistic belief. Seems fairly straight forward. Makes perfect sense. I later found that that particular simplicity, which I always strive for, was deceptively so.
Turns out that that was a very useful distinction for me, but not for the reasons I initially began using it. I wanted to clearly demarcate two categories of belief as mentioned heretofore. I called them "linguistic belief", which was meant to pick out all belief that is existentially dependent upon language, and "pre-linguistic" or "non-linguistic" belief, which was meant to pick out all belief that was not existentially dependent upon language. Seems all well and good right up to the point when we want to set out cat's belief about bowls in terms of the content of the belief.
A non-linguistic belief cannot be existentially dependent upon language. If a bowl is existentially dependent upon language(and they are) and the content of the cat's belief includes the bowl(and it does) then that particular belief is existentially dependent upon language, and there's no way around it. All belief about bowls is existentially dependent upon bowls. Even illusions of bowls are not possible without bowls. So, I had arrived at incoherence and/or self-contradiction without being guilty of equivocating terms. This forced me to re-evaluate my position and what I was aiming to take proper account of. I want to offer a notion of belief that is philosophically and scientifically respectable. Such a notion ought be able to sensibly bridge the gap between language less belief and the belief of language users in a way that belief as propositional content has been found sorely lacking.
I had - and remain to have - no doubt whatsoever that some language less creatures have belief, but realized that we could not make sense of those sorts of belief by using the terms "linguistic" and "pre-linguistic" if I wanted to also hold that non-linguistic belief cannot be existentially dependent upon language. Some language less creatures' belief includes content that is itself existentially dependent upon language. Believing that a mouse is under the stove for example includes the stove. This makes perfect sense given that the overlap between their world and ours includes things that we created via language use; some of which are perfectly capable of being directly perceived by language less creatures and thus could be sensibly said to be part of the content of their belief.
So, I had no choice but to abandon the idea that a language less creature's belief could not be existentially dependent upon language, because some of them clearly are. This line of thought led me to realization that the difference between language less belief and the belief of language users could not be properly set out by using such terms. While language use is the difference, it was not whether or not the content of the belief was existentially dependent upon language use that determined the difference between language less creatures' belief and language users'. Rather, it was whether or not the content included language use.
Thus, we can make sense of the cat's belief that a mouse is behind the tree, or that a mouse is under the sofa, or that the food bowl is empty, or that a duck is under the car because none of those beliefs have language use as content. The correlations being drawn do not include language use. However, my cat also has some belief that includes language use as content, not because she asks, "you want some treats?" each and every time in the same tone prior to giving her treats, but because I do, and she has come to believe that she is about to get treats when I say that as a result of drawing correlations between my language use and what happens afterwards. She has attributed meaning to the language use by virtue of drawing correlations between it and eating treats. This points towards language acquisition and what it takes to go from language less creature to language user.
Now, if we go back to my granddaughter, we can also sensibly say that she believed stuff was in the fridge, and her belief was true because stuff was in the fridge. So, when she heard someone say otherwise, she knew that the claim was false on it's face, because she knew what was being claimed(she knew what it meant) and she had true belief to the contrary. The claim made no sense to her! Her belief included correlations between language use(which is directly perceptible, but includes things that are not - meaning) and other directly perceptible things like the fridge and its contents.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Are there beliefs that do not rely upon accounts(language use)?
I do not completely agree with Davidson or Witt. There are important differences at a fundamental level between their views and my own. My and your view differ in much the same respect, I think. Yours is more in line with theirs, whereas I disagree with all three of you on some basic tenets. It could be summed up with "truth and meaning are both prior to language".
:wink:
Like the shingles virus that I'm currently suffering from...
:yikes:
If there's confusion about what I meant with "exterior" in the scare quotes, what I meant was the usual 'things are they are in themselves' in contrast to 'things as they are for us'. This was intended to resonate with the non-linguistic ('things as they are in themselves') vs linguistic ('things as they are for us') distinction in context.
Indeed. Gives me time to do this though! lol. Cannot move around as usual, otherwise I would not be doing this. There are more real life results based things I would be doing if I could.
1. The kettle is boiling
2. "The kettle is boiling"
3. "The kettle is boiling" is true
4. '"The kettle is boiling" is true'
5. '"The kettle is boiling is true' is true
Previously I've felt obliged to explain that 1, 3 and 5 in this list are facts.
Arguably, since they are directly about sentences and not about kettles, 3 and 5 might be called linguistic facts. But on that criteria, 1 is directly about kettles, not sentences.
There are, it seems, folk who think that we need an item 0 in this list, a state of affairs or an exterior thing in itself, outside of language or perception or belief or some other; and that it is this item 0 that is the fact, which is represented (or some such...) in item 1.
And when you ask them what item 0 is, the answer is something like that it is the kettle boiling.
But that's item 1.
As if there were a boiling kettle that were not yet a boiling kettle without our intervention.
Nor am I, nor are they with each other, and often nor are any of us even in agreement with ourselves...
Understood. I do strive for agreement with myself though.
:wink:
Ya, I'm not saying language can't be precise, only that some concepts resist precision. So, we agree.
Quoting creativesoul
I agree, that a non-linguistic belief is not dependent on language. However, I would probably word the next statement a bit different. The concept bowl is dependent on language, but the fact that there is a bowl (the object referred to as bowl), this fact can be part of the of the cat's belief. In fact, many states-of-affairs can be part of the cat's belief. So, I'm separating the concept from the facts involved in the cat's belief.
Quoting creativesoul
Again, here, including the stove is just including a fact about reality, their belief doesn't include the concept stove. The object that the concept refers to is not dependent on language, just as many facts aren't dependent on language. So, the cat's belief, it seems to me, is not dependent on language, at least our language, but maybe dependent upon some fact that has obtained as a result of our interaction with the world. So, I don't see an overlap, i.e., if I'm interpreting you correctly.
I agree with your assessment of your granddaughter's belief. I think your other thoughts may need more refinement. That's my take, for what its worth.
Is it?
1. The kettle is boiling
(1) is a sentence but a boiling kettle isn't a sentence.
What sentence is it?
Why, it's (2)...
Hence (2) is the sentence...
You seem to be brewing some sort of circularity.
1. The kettle is boiling
2. "The kettle is boiling"
These are two different sentences.
Have you encountered the 'use/ mention' distinction? The LHS is the mention of the linguistic expression itself. Remember the RHS is not to be thought of in this context as a linguistic expression, but as the state of affairs it posits. So "snow is white" says that snow is white; it is not talking about itself but about the fact that snow is white.But ""snow is white"" is talking about "snow is white" the linguistic expression.
Thanks. I don't find anything to disagree with what you say there. What I meant by "self-evident", though, is something like "immediately apparent"; when I think about my experience taken as a whole it seems immediately apparent that it is not the world. perhaps I can say it is of the world, but then the world is not an object of any perception.
Even the empirical objects of the everyday are not (taken as wholes) objects of perception, because all I perceive are images or impressions (of them). I put "of them" in brackets because the idea that our images and impressions are of empirical objects is an inferentially derived collective representation, an inference to what certainly seems to be the best explanation, or so it seems to me, anyway.
Quoting creativesoul
Just to be clear, I haven't posited an "actual world"; I've talked about the distinction between experienced actuality, meaning actual experience, which I'm saying is of images, sensations, impressions, and the world, which I'm saying is the idea of the totality of things, facts and relations that we think gives rise to actual experience.
Of course actual experience also involves recognition of invariances or repetitions and patterns of image, sensation and impression, and I'm saying that it is both from these, and communication via language with others, that the idea of a world is constructed. So, I'm agreeing with Davidson, Wittgenstein and Kant that there is no substantive distinction between world and schema.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, but this is purely arbitrary confabulation as opposed to what we say about tables, kettles and cups, which is a conventional store of practical wisdom derived from actual invention and use.
Quoting creativesoul
I would put that differently: actuality and non-linguistic meaning are both prior to language. For me truth is linguistic correspondence with our ideas of the actual (ideas which are themselves not necessarily or wholly linguistic).
Here we are entering territory that is very tricky to speak about; in fact I would say impossible to speak about unambiguously, but we can and do get a sense of it. We understand it even if we cannot definitively enframe it. Discourse is by no means the "be all and end all".
Quoting creativesoul
There is, however, a clear distinction between the sense in which a belief might be thought to be existentially dependent on language because the believer is a language user, and the sense in which the believing or expectations of a non-language user might be thought to be existentially dependent on language because the object the belief is about would not exist had language not existed.
1. Boiling the kettle is
Is (1) a grammatically incorrect fact or a grammatically incorrect sentence?
2. "The kettle is boiling"
3. "'The kettle is boiling'"
4. ...
One of these things is not like the others...
1. The kettle is boiling
2. La bouilloire est en ébullition
(1) is an English sentence and (2) is a French sentence.
So, what do they say?
(1) says "The kettle is boiling" and (2) says "La bouilloire est en ébullition".
No, (1) is "The kettle is boiling" and (2) is "La bouilloire est en ébullition".
What do they say?
I'll answer for you. They both say that the kettle is boiling.
But that's (1), not (0)...
1. The kettle is boiling
(1) is an English sentence. You appear to have accepted this above. But the fact that the kettle is boiling isn't an English sentence. Therefore, (1) isn't the fact that the kettle is boiling. (1) refers to the fact that the kettle is boiling. (1) is about the fact that the kettle is boiling. (1) mentions the fact that the kettle is boiling. etc.
When and where there has never been language there could have never been stoves.
That sums up the difference between our views it seems. The object that "stove" refers to is existentially dependent upon language on my view, but not yours.
5. ......
4. "'"The kettle is boiling"'"
3. '"The kettle is boiling"'
2. "The kettle is boiling"
...and in each step the bit in bold just is the next item in the list; it's what each sentence points to. So what do we bold in:
1. The kettle is boiling
What does it point to?
And here some conclude that there must be a non-linguistic, unquoted, thing-in-itself to which (1) is pointing.
Or it points to a fact, which is a thing in the world, and when asked what that thing is, they say it is a boiling kettle - which is (1)
But (1) is pointing to the boiling kettle, if anything. If it points to anything, it points to itself. Here the sequence ends. Here you show your understanding not by pointing but by making tea.
Edit: does exactly this. I'd written this post before I read his.
Michael, what fact does (1) state? It states that the kettle is boiling - which is (1).
Quoting Janus
That's the bit directly above that seems to be untenable in the same way that Kant's Noumena is.
(1) refers to the fact that the kettle is boiling.
The kettle is boiling. (1) refers to that.
(1) is about the fact that the kettle is boiling.
The kettle is boiling. (1) is about that fact.
(1) mentions the fact that the kettle is boiling.
The kettle is boiling. (1) mentions that fact.
In each, (1) is that.
Somewhat circular, no? Is that OK? SO how can it be that: "(1) isn't the fact that the kettle is boiling".
The part following "that" is a proposition.
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
You can't seem to make up your mind.
Quoting myself.
One issue here is what a "linguistic fact" is, so that we can understand what a "nonlinguistic fact" is.
It seems to me that it doesn't make sense to say that (1) is a linguistic fact. If someone thingks it does, then it is up tot hem to provide some account.
I had no point other than that the part the follows "that" is a proposition.
You don't know what a proposition is?
So what does the proposition say? Why, it says that the kettle is boiling...
But that bit in bold is a proposition...
Because (1) is a sentence and the fact that the kettle is boiling isn't a sentence. Therefore, (1) isn't the fact that the kettle is boiling.
You seem to be unable to separate use from mention. Here's another example that should make it clearer:
1. The kettle is boiling
2. (1) is true
The correct translation of (2) is "the kettle is boiling" is true. The incorrect translation of (2) is the kettle is boiling is true.
On the contrary, that is exactly what I am pointing to.
Quoting Michael
Yes, that is what I have been at pains to point out.
And yet you are conflating them when you say that (1) is the fact that the kettle is boiling. It isn't. (1) is a sentence.
So, what is the fact to which your sentence "The kettle is boiling" points? In your own words. Take your time.
The fact that the kettle is boiling.
I don't have anything like Kant's noumena in mind, so it seems that you are not understanding what I;m saying. The "pre-linguistic actuality" I have in mind is our basic experience of images, smells, sensations and impressions as well as recognition of repetition and pattern. I'm saying we can gain no conceptual purchase on that basic experience because to do so would change it into something else; something schematic and conceptual. Nevertheless it is the primordial stuff out of which we have woven our ideas of a world of entities and relations and the totality of facts about them
Quoting Tate
I'd say it's more that you can't seem to get the distinction.
You start out by saying that the sentence is about the boiling kettle, but then end up saying that the sentence is the boiling kettle.
Pointing to a kettle doesn’t make one a kettle.
Quoting Michael
Ah, that fact. The kettle is boiling.
But you said that was a sentence...
This bit:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Michael
Is it both a sentence and a fact?
Nuh.
Oh? Let me quote it again for you:
Quoting Banno
This says that Item 1 (a sentence) is the kettle boiling.
Sentences are not kettles.
Correct. It's content. That's just how English works.
Al said that he was tired.
We don't know exactly what words he uttered, but we know what he said, that is, we know the content: that he was tired.
If you tried making sense, maybe I'd understand you a little better.
What I said is in line with the well-worn use/ mention distinction which you apparently don't understand.
I'm quite familiar with use/mention. Your account of the t-sentence is garbled.
:up:
Quoting Banno
So we go down and down, diligently following all the little arrows pointing to our supposed destination, to arrive at the final arrow ... that points at itself.
No wonder folk feel short-changed by this kind of shenanigans.
Semiotics fixes that for you. It formalises the necessary connection between model and world by saying one eventually arrives at a mechanical switch. You have a bit that can be physically flipped. You have some informational state that also does some useful real world work.
Logic can be treated as some kind of Platonic abstraction. But that is why it encounters its Godelian limits. Pointers that don't point at anything but themselves.
Logic makes better sense when it is seen as an exercise in semiotics – an organism's efforts to gain regulatory control over its entropic environment.
Truth is pragmatic. It is all about a bunch of switches being flipped in a manner that itself sustains the whole enterprise that is about intelligent habits or routines of switch flipping.
So logic is the construction of a selfhood that can live in its world. It is not about mathematical abstraction, except in the service of entropy regulation. And so it is pointers all the way down to the pointer that must be physically flipped in a way that then recursively sustains the entire edifice of pointing.
See kettle. Want boil. Flip switch. Make tea. Realise this is useful. Repeat ad infinitum until the pragmatic connection between the model and the world – between the rate independent information and rate dependent dynamics, as Pattee puts its – breaks in some way.
But there really are the two different worlds on either side of the same "ultimate pointer" – the mechanical switch that mediates semiotically between the information and the dynamics.
So the kettle is either on or off. Boiling or not boiling. Human intelligence has contrived a world where life has the purest semiotic logic. We can regulate the flow of entropy at the press of a button. The pointer at the end of the line is the pointer that points the material world in the way that best fits our desires.
And in enforcing that system of mechanism on the world, we in fact create a world that is now inanimate – over-ruled in terms of having is own desires – along with the inner self that is now defined in terms of all the power it has accumulated in its button-pressing fingertips.
No wonder the situation seems a little Cartesian, setting up the eternal duel between baffled idealist and naive realist.
But semiotics is the theory of truth that properly connects the self and its world by understanding there has to be the "epistemic cut" in the form of the canonical switch – the "sign" or "pointer" that is the bridge because it is equally much part of the ideal realm as the material realm. It stands with its feet in both camps in being the intentional opening and shutting of the unintentioned entropic flows which pass through it.
This is all a lot easier to understand when dealing with biosemiosis – the action down at the level of enzymes and other molecular machinery.
But even at the level of linguistic and logical semiosis, it is easy to see that utterances are meant to regulate habits of action. Words and numbers are used by the human social organism as a system of switches to keep folk collective pointed in an entropically self-sustaining state of organisation.
The laws of thought only ever arose in the search to view nature as "switchable". And we by consequence became creatures who were all about the act of hitting those damn switches.
A system of logical switches became all that we could see. But does it actually make sense that following the hierarchy of pointing down to its roots and you should expect the final pointer to point to itself?
Nope. The job of the pointer is to point at its intended real effect. And at the level of some actual switch, it gets to produce that effect as a direction physically imposed on an entropic flow.
That the kettle is boiling is a statement about the world being neutered of its intentionality and it having been pointed physically in the direction we desired.
This would be why Kant talked about the thing-in-itself as if nature might have its own intentions in play. Idealism then says these desires must be properly organismic. Realists reply instead that facts are facts – entirely inanimate.
Pragmatism and semiotics then slips in between these two eternally raging camps to point out that nature's "desires" are fairly minimal and not organismic. But start sticking in the right regulatory machinery – the semiosis of codes or informational switches – and you do get the new thing of the organism. You get dissipative structure that has innate intelligence and self-organisation.
The "price" is that its truths are pragmatic. They are neither subjective, nor objective. Instead this distinction between a self and its world is what emerges from the useful action of seeking to make the world as one would wish it to be. Truth is an effective setting of the switches. The construction of an Umwelt, or a view of the world as it is with ourselves fully embedded in its reality.
So, tell us what your understanding is and just how you think my account is garbled, just what errors you think I have made in that account. If you can't do that your unargued comments are pointless.
You made the mistake of asserting that the world can somehow be false. By definition, it can't.
It went down hill from there.
No I never asserted that the world can be false. Perhaps you could quote where I've said that. The RHS expresses a state of affairs, which may or may not obtain; if it fails to obtain the the LHS is false.
I'll comment further on this:
Quoting Tate
I'll try one more time, since I can see the possibility of perceived ambiguity lurking in the quoted statements above. The RHS is a linguistic statement describing some state of affairs, could be real or imagined. It is a linguistic usage. The LHS is a quotation (mention) of that linguistic statement, which refers to the statement itself, rather than the state of affairs the statement refers to. This stuff is not easy to talk about to be sure, but I think we all know every well what "X is y" is true iff X is y, since it just shows the logic of correspondence which is common in everyday use. We understand ourselves to be able to talk about a shared world and say things both true and false about it.
Quoting Janus
This, my friend, is garbled. I think we're done here.
Quoting Tate
The second statement quoted there explains the first. So, why bring it up again? In ancient times the collective representation of the world said the Earth was flat; this turned out to be inconsistent with subsequent experience.
Leaving aside that I may have expressed myself poorly or ambiguously, what is it exactly you want to disagree with? On the other hand if you're done you're done, and I don't care; but in that case you have shown yourself to be uncharitable and unwilling to address what I am actually trying to say.
See the post below, which is saying the same as I have been, probably more clearly than I have been,
Per the RHS sentence, we can either use it (to express something about the world) or mention it (in order to express something about the sentence itself). The following passage explains Tarski's view on this (bold mine).
Quoting Truth, The Liar, and Tarski's Semantics - Gila Sher (from Blackwell's A Companion to Philosophical Logic)
Hey Sam, sorry about the delay. Doctor visit.
I think we agree much more than the above seems to suggest. Could you re-read that post and tell me at what point exactly you begin to disagree?
Makes sense to me thus far...
The tree is outside of language, perception, and belief is it not?
A kettle? Not so much.
The tree we are talking about is outside of language?
I don't understand that.
Things such as the tree being, say, 11m tall, will be true regardless of their being stated.
I'm not defending that use of "linguistic fact" or "non-linguistic" fact.
All kettles were, are, and will forever remain to be, existentially dependent upon language. If they were planned originals, then all meaningful marks involving kettles emerged in the planning and fabrication of the first kettles, as well as accounting practices of kettles thereafter. If they were accidental originals having resulted from ingenious on the spot novelty of use, then all meaningful marks involving kettles emerged after the original kettle.
Statements involving kettles. Situations involving kettles. Circumstances involving kettles. Belief involving kettles. Knowledge involving kettles. Everything involving kettles came immediately prior to, during, and/or after the first kettle emerged into the world.
All facts involving kettles are existentially dependent upon language.
We may be talking about different trees. The one in my front yard is most certainly outside of language.
The term "tree" consists of meaningful marks. The term "tree" is not outside of language. What I'm picking out of the world to the exclusion of all else by using that term most certainly is.
Some facts involving trees are existentially dependent upon language. All statements about trees are.
Only after we first stipulated what counted as eleven meters. Not before. The fact that the tree is eleven meters tall is existentially dependent upon language. The fact that the mouse is behind the tree is not.
Quoting Janus
In the bottom quote above you are doing what you said we could not do in the top quote. In addition, we've also arrived at incoherency/self-contradiction by virtue of equivocating the notion of "pre-linguistic actuality". The top quote sets it out one way. The bottom another.
It is very hard to talk about the subject matter at hand when we do not avoid such results and/or situations. I think we can nix the notion of "pre-linguistic actuality" altogether and by doing so, increase clarity while losing nothing. While "pre-linguistic" seems potentially useful, "actuality" does not.
I think we agree that a cat's belief that a mouse is under the sofa includes a mouse, the sofa, and a spatiotemporal relationship between the two from the cat's vantage point... right?
One consideration worth mentioning...
An overlap happens between language less creatures' belief and belief of language users. The overlap could be rendered as a Venn diagram with the commonalities being directly perceptible things. Trees, sofas, stoves, fridges, mice, and spatiotemporal relationships, for instance, are directly perceptible things within the aforementioned overlap. This overlap could be talked about in terms of the world shared between cats, mice, and humans.
No, I'm not; I'm just saying what we all know; that we know, in the most basic sense, pre-linguistic sensory experience, which our language cannot capture without losing its living quality and distorting it into a world of fixed entities and facts; which, in other words our language cannot adequately capture even though it can express linguistic truths and falsities which pertain to that collective representational schema we call the world.
To say otherwise would be to claim that animals do not experience anything at all.
1. Joe Biden
(1) isn't the President. (1) is a name. Joe Biden is the President.
Again, this is the use-mention distinction.
Remember this?
So:
1. The kettle is boiling
2. (1) is the fact that the kettle is boiling
The correct translation of (2) is "the kettle is boiling" is the fact that the kettle is boiling. This is false. Just as "Joe Biden" is the President is false.
That the kettle is boiling is the fact that the kettle is boiling.
I don't know if Blackwell got this right. In Truth and Proof (1969) Tarski said this:
So he seems quite opposed to the redundancy view.
But you said that was a sentence...
What is so hard to understand about this?
1. Joe Biden
(1) is a name and Joe Biden is a man.
Use-mention. It's really simple.
Sure. Quite agree.
1. The kettle is boiling
(1) is a sentence and that the kettle is boiling is a fact.
1'. "The kettle is boiling"
(1') is a sentence.
1. The kettle is boiling
2. "The kettle is boiling"
(1) is a sentence, (2) is a quote.
1. Joe Biden
2. The kettle is boiling
(1) is a name and (2) is a sentence. (1) isn't Joe Biden and (2) isn't the fact that the kettle is boiling.
This thread keeps circling back because Banno's dishonesty drags it down. And so it never gets anywhere. We can never progress in a discussion about truth when dishonesty interferes.
You seem to be suggesting that you can't create a bowl without a language. I'm sure that pre-linguistic man created bowls of some sort, or maybe you're referring to a particular kind of bowl, say plastic bowls. Even if you're right, it seems like a stretch to the conclude that because a thing (maybe stove is more appropriate), is created by language users, that the cat's belief is dependent upon language. When I use the phrase "dependent upon language," I'm referring to the use of concepts as part of a statement of belief. So, the cat is not dependent upon language in this sense. You're adding another sense of "dependent upon language" that doesn't involve the direct use of concepts, which seems to be an indirect dependence. Am I understanding your point, or not? Mostly I'm talking about concepts, in particular the concept truth. The difference maybe in our focus.
Makes sense, cheers. Question though. The source uses the word "correspondence" in the context of mapping expressions of language and concerned objects, is that meant as fleshing out a correspondence theory, or is it meant in an informal sense of "an explanatory relation of equivalence"
I'm not sure about that. There is the fact that snow is white and there is the proposition that snow is white. Are these the same thing? I'm inclined to say that the proposition is the truth-bearer and the fact the truth-maker.
You just need to stipulate what you want the terms to mean. There's too much controversy surrounding it to assume your audience will know what you mean.
"What might a fact be? Three popular views about the nature of facts can be distinguished:
"A fact is just a true truth-bearer,
A fact is just an obtaining state of affairs,
A fact is just a sui generis type of entity in which objects exemplify properties or stand in relations.
In order to understand these claims and the relations between them it is necessary to appeal to some accounts of truth, truth-bearers, states of affairs, obtaining, objects, properties, relations and exemplification. Propositions are a popular candidate for the role of what is true or false. One view of propositions has it that these are composed exclusively of concepts, individual concepts (for example, the concept associated with the proper name “Sam”), general concepts (the concept expressed by the predicates “is sad” and “est triste”) and formal concepts (for example, the concept expressed by “or”). Concepts so understood are things we can understand. Properties and relations, we may then say, are not concepts, for they are not the sort of thing we understand. Properties are exemplified by objects and objects fall under concepts. Similarly, objects stand in relations but fall under relational concepts.". -SEP article on facts
The article goes into the meaning of "obtains" which is also controversial.
Objects can have names. The name of an object is a linguistic object, which can be used as a representative, a stand-in, for the object (which may or may not be itself linguistic) in linguistic contexts. If you build a small model of your neighborhood, the model of the house in which you live is not a name for your house, though it functions in this context similarly to how a name functions in a linguistic context.
To say something of the state or circumstances of an object, we need more than just names of objects in our language, just as to show the color of your house, you paint the model the same color, to show its doors and windows, you make small versions of those in the, ahem, corresponding places on the model, and to show where your house is in relation to streets, trees, and other houses, you place models of those in the appropriate places.
How we do that in language is controversial. We could say -- in some sense, following Plato -- that there are also objects that are properties of objects, and these sorts of objects can also have names, and so we can conjoin the name of an object and the name of a property, perhaps in a special way, to show that the object has that property, to say that it does. You paint the model of your house blue to show that your house is blue; you say "My house is blue" to show, in language, that it is blue, to model in language its state of possessing the property of being blue.
There are objections to treating properties as themselves objects, objections very important to some philosophers. Does it make any difference? You could still model your house in language by saying things like "My house is blue" even without considering "blue" a name of anything. But what justifies the "is blue" part of the sentence? The presence of "my house" is justified by being a name for my house. If "blue" is not a name for anything, what justifies including it in a sentence which is part of a linguistic model of your house? If your house possesses a certain property, and a name for that property is "blue", we are justified; but if not?
At this point, for some philosophers, suspicion begins to fall on the dominant role of naming here: what we are about here is modeling things in language, and naming is a part of that, but only a part; it's not "in charge", and perhaps shouldn't even be treated as the paradigmatic case of linguistic modeling. The first question, they say, should be whether "My house is blue" is part of a linguistic model of my house, not whether "blue" is a name of anything, not even whether "my house" is a name of anything.
But what would make "My house is blue" part of a model of my house? How can we decide that? Is "My house is green" also part of such a model? Why not? What about "Joe's house is blue"? Is that also part of a model of my house? What about "Joe's car is green"?
[ Off to work. ]
For whole sentences, yes, a bit.
Quoting Michael
Yes, a bit, as soon as we notice that parts of the sentence taken separately are about or describe the cat on the mat.
"the cat" is about or describes the cat.
"the mat" is about or describes the mat.
"is on" is about or describes the notorious pair of objects.
Does it, or perhaps the whole sentence, be about or describe a relation? That could be mysterious and controversial. My objection to it, and to any supposed truth-making correlate of a whole sentence, even e.g. of (non-relational) "snow is white", is that it misunderstands how declarative sentences work, and further obscures the matter.
Declarative sentences work by pointing a component word or word-string at one or more objects. (Picture 2.) Thinking that the whole device points at a fact or state of affairs obscures the matter by suggesting that the fact has a similar structure to a sentence, or even a similar function. Perhaps we think the sentence is pointing at a pointing. Who knows what half-baked notions fly around, infecting believers and skeptics of correspondence alike.
There are two natural options here.
One is a matter of agreement, among the users of the linguistic model, to say "Pat's house is blue" is part of our shared model of Pat's house, or to say it isn't. But we've slipped in new problems and possibly new assumptions: what is "Pat's house is blue"? Is it an object? Does it have, or lack, the property of being part of our model of Pat's house? We can attempt to go around these questions by saying that the users of the model simply agree to say, or not say, the sentence "Pat's house is blue," without talking about the model at all. By saying or not saying a given sentence, users of a model show that the sentence is, or is not, part of their linguistic model, without actually saying that. The latter is still implied, though, and this fact makes certain sorts of sentences ridiculous or puzzling.
The other option is to focus on the model, rather than our use of the model, to devise a systematic way of relating sentences like "Pat's house is blue" and "Joe's car is green." We want to have the kind of model that, by including a sentence like "Pat's house is blue," excludes sentences like "Pat's house is green," "Pat's house is chartreuse," and so on. We also haven't given up entirely on properties, but we want to put aside the question of whether they are objects with names. We still want to say that "Pat's house is blue" means that Pat's house has the property of being blue, and that "Joe's house is blue" means it has that same property, in some sense or other.
There is some motivation for using both approaches. We would like the users of a model, who have agreed to say "Pat's house is blue," also to agree not to say "Pat's house is vermilion," but agreement by itself provides no obvious guarantee that they will do so. On the other hand, the only account we have so far of whether "Pat's house is blue" is part of the model, is precisely the users of the model agreeing to say it. The model can allow only one of "Pat's house is blue" and "Pat's house is cornflower," without telling you which one.
Which raises new questions.
(1) Are we really either entitled or required to say there is a model here at all, or are we really only talking about what people agree to say and not say?
If you argue first that being a user of a model just is saying certain things not others, and nothing else, you can quickly reach the conclusion that the model itself is unnecessary.
(2) So what does being a user of the model amount to? If I say "Pat's house is green," and you say, "Pat's house is aqua," can we still be considered users of the same model? Do we have different models, or do we disagree about which sentence is part of the model?
The no-models account seems to have nothing to say here at all: we just say different things; if there are reasons for that, they will come from elsewhere (perhaps even a causal account).
Why is this at all un-obvious?
I suppose, because why would we need a sentence to point "white" at snow and not need another sentence to point "snow" at snow?
And, because perhaps we don't need a sentence to point "white" at snow. "White" already applies to what it applies to, and that happens to include snow. Otherwise the sentence wouldn't be true.
But we need a sentence to point out, highlight, the pointing or application of "white" to snow in particular, out of all the other things it applies to.
I thought something like a simple model of language would be more useful than going round and round about what existing idioms mean. It was intended to be uncontroversial, which turns out to be as much as is uncontroversial of something you might call a kind of functionalism. I'm letting the word "model" do a lot of the work, which some people may not like. I haven't, for instance, tied linguistic behavior to anything more, occasions of utterance, what utterance might imply, anything like that.
Any strenuous objections so far?
That first sentence is very long, but the more I read it over, the more it looks like a partially formed incomplete thought. Be that as it may, I've thought long and hard about what you've been saying and I think, but I'm not at all certain of it, that you seem to be claiming - roughly mind you - that language doesn't do any justice(so to speak) to language less creatures experiences. You seem to also want to say that it cannot, despite our being able to use it to make true claims about our shared world, which you call "that collective representational schema".
The last sentence clearly suggests that we only have two choices when it comes to talking about the thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience of language less creatures. We can either hold the view that you hold or claim that language less creatures do not have any experience at all.
That's not true.
The approach one takes towards setting out the meaningful experience of language less creatures is pivotal to one's understanding, assuming one maintains coherency by avoiding self-contradiction and/or equivocation. Different approaches often lead to different consequences. Our respective approaches are remarkably different. Being a charitable reader, the one you've employed/adopted leads you to believe that language cannot capture the meaningful experience of language less creatures.
Whereas my approach leads me to first question what it takes to 'capture' the meaningful experience of language less creatures. What are we expecting to be able to do with language? Language cannot reproduce meaningful experience. We're just offering reports and/or accounts of meaningful experience. We're not attempting to accurately reproduce each and every aspect of meaningful experience in our report/account of it.
Perhaps you would find it helpful to adjust your expectations regarding what we can do with language.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I appreciate that the attempt to begin an analysis of something like truth with words and sentences taken as grounding categorical objects can be quite useful in building and improving on computational machines , but it seems to me to be utterly sterile and un-insightful in grappling with why and how humans actually use language. There are no words or sentences outside o f their actual context use, and in their use a word does not point at an object, it creates the object in that it produces a new sense of meaning.
If one doesn't ground the meaning of words and sentences in purpose-driven contextual senses arising out of actual, always unique situations of uses , and instead tries to lift out features of words and sentences
that can act as self-identically persisting meanings whose stable relations we can study via determinations of ‘truth’, we have perhaps contributed to our ability to build better machines. But we have not understood why truth is an unstable notion derived from more fundamental concepts liken intelligibility and relevance. It is the latter which are fundamental to actual language use. Every use of a word or sentence opens up a new way in which that utterance is intelligible and relevant.
Most definitions of truth conceal this by treating these features as if they can be cut away from what we are doing when we understand or misunderstand each other.
Seems like a good angle of approach to me. I think it's a good way into the role truth - or like concepts such as accuracy and felicity - might play in explaining how language touches the world.
It's all about the content of the belief Sam. I think you would agree that believing a mouse is under the stove depends upon the prior existence of a mouse, a stove, and the spatiotemporal relationship between the two from the vantage point of the believing creature(regardless of whether or not the creature has language). There may be other elements as well, but for simplicity's sake alone, we can just focus upon those main elements of this particular belief. The belief is existentially dependent upon all of those elements. All stoves are existentially dependent upon language. All belief involving stoves must be as well.
The cat is not dependent upon language. We certainly agree there. I completely agree that cats do not use linguistic concepts. However, they can and do directly perceive some things that emerged into the world by virtue of our use of linguistic concepts; stoves and sofas are precisely such things. All belief about such things is existentially dependent upon those things. Those things are existentially dependent upon language. All belief about those things is existentially dependent upon language.
I do not think that I'm adding another sense of "dependent upon language" - as in a completely different sense - so much as expanding the sense you've put to use here in such a way that it includes spatiotemporal considerations pertaining to the direct dependence upon language use that some things require for their initial emergence. I mentioned earlier to someone here how I thought that logic's lack of spatiotemporal consideration was a fundamental flaw. The approach I use includes keeping spatiotemporal considerations in mind. I see no other way to arrive at a scientifically and philosophically respectable position regarding how belief emerges and subsequently evolves given time and mutation. This ties into truth and meaning both, because it is via thought and belief formation that both truth and meaning first emerge onto the world stage(that's a topic in it's own right).
That being said, you're right to take note of the difference, because to the best of my knowledge, it is unique.
This ought help you to understand my use of "existential dependency".
Probably. The principal assumption here (since we're headed for truth) is that language can be used as a medium for making models of the world; if model making is interesting, that would make language interesting.
Quoting Joshs
That's literally false, for obvious reasons.
Quoting Joshs
Not sure how producing a sense creates an object, but whatever that means it is far more controversial than I was going for.
If you think there is no sense whatsoever in which language can be used as a medium for modeling the world, I won't be saying much that makes sense to you.
Quoting Moliere
What me? I just assumed someone else would pick it up from here...
Quoting fdrake
Yeah that's all I'm going for. Language is other things too, but I'm waiting to see if anything else makes a difference to this discussion.
Back in a little while.
How do we demonstrate the existence of these alleged words and sentences that nobody is actually using? By pointing to a dictionary or other book? What you have in mind is not some actual realm with any coherent reality apart from immediate context, but how we make use of memory and history in actual situations of sense-making.
James Conant writes:
‘the meaning of an expression’ (if by this we mean the meaning that the expression has when employed in a context of significant use) is not something which an expression possesses already on its own and which is subsequently imported into a context of use:
You say to me: ‘You understand this expression, don’t you? Well then – I am using it in the sense you are familiar with’. – As if the sense were an atmosphere accompanying the word, which is carried into every kind of application.”(PI)
What we are tempted to call ‘the meaning of the sentence’ is not a property the sentence already has in abstraction from any possibility of use and which it then carries with it – like an atmosphere accompanying it – into each specific occasion of use. It is, as Wittgenstein
keeps saying, in the circumstances in which it is ‘actually used’ that the sentence has sense. This is why Wittgenstein says in On Certainty, §348: the words ‘I am here’ have a meaning only in certain contexts – that is, it is a mistake to think that the words themselves possess a meaning apart from their capacity to have a meaning when called upon in various contexts of use.
The philosopher takes there to be something which is the thought which the sentence itself expresses. The only questions considerations of use will raise for such a philosopher (in an account of what we mean by our words) will be questions concerning the relationship
between ‘the meaning of the sentence’ – which we grasp independently of its contexts of use – and the various contexts of use into which the sentence can be imported. Questions can be raised about why what is said is being said and what the point is of its being said
on a particular occasion of use. But the very possibility of asking such questions presupposes that it is already reasonably clear what thought is expressed, and thus what it would be for truth to have been spoken on this occasion of speaking.”
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
All of our experiences ‘model’ a world in the sense
that in order to have even the most minimal
perception is to connect an event with a rich, integrated network of constuals that anticipates into , and thus, interprets experience. Everything we recognize as intelligible is a product of the way we organize what appears to us on the basis of its role in a web of relations.
In doing so, we don’t simply force appear xes i to our pre-existing schemes but also adapt those schemes to the appearances. Using a word is the application of a scheme In its use , the sense of meaning of the word changes in accord with the novelty of the context. Prior rules and conventions of word meaning will not help us here since they also alter themselves in the context of actual word use.
Scientific models function the same way.They are not backward looking templates designed to
simply represent by forcing novelty into a pre-existing framework. Our models are projective, anticipatory. Models change our interactions with our world and thus are thus reciprocally changed by the world they modify.
I think disagreement is a natural way into the question of truth; maybe neither of us is right but at least one of us is wrong. (Those colors don't contrast so clearly as I wanted, sorry.)
Is that enough, to get at what being wrong is, and being right is not that? We're accustomed to doing this the other way because of the asymmetry: there's one way to be right but an infinite number of ways to be wrong.
This is an odd case, because it's clearly true (if I had picked better colors) that we can't both be right, even before we give any more substance to what being right is. Without disagreement, you're forced to give an account of being right directly, I think.
Do we need an account of how disagreement is possible? I'd like to assume, to begin with, that we don't, and that even a very minimal sort of disagreement, like one of us misspeaking, will be good enough. We'll find out.
So I'm going to proceed from a scenario like this, to start with, and nothing else, however this situation arose. The question stays, what is the nature of such a disagreement? About what do these two people disagree?
I get that you would prefer another approach. Maybe I would too -- I'm undecided.
But this thread has overwhelmingly been about redundancy and T-sentences. All I've done is provide a sort of test-bed that I hope will clarify that conversation. I have already indirectly described both, and I believe most readers here recognize that.
I get that you think this entire approach, and most of this thread is wrong-headed. I hoped one of the virtues of my presentation would be that it is explicit enough, without becoming pedantic, that disagreement with the model could be tied to something I said explicitly. Not just, "here you shouldn't do that but this other thing," but "if you do that, here's the problem you won't be able to solve."
Can you point to something like that? These posts have a very specific purpose, and it's not to provide evidence of whether I think something you approve of.
Paraphrasing: "You think of the model of the house as the same kind of thing as the house, though also different from the house, here the model, there the house. the money and the cow you can buy with it."
Language, of course, is far more complex and varied than this, Stick with the model and we end up with the simplistic notion of language as no more than reference espoused by @Harry Hindu.
When I (or anyone here) writes critically, the result is of course that folk get their backs up and double down. So I'm wondering if instead you might address the limits of the notion of language as a model.
One of the issues is the object of agreement. Propositions work for that role, but some reject the existence of such things.
I think their only recourse is something like behaviorism. Agreements are nothing more than a certain kind of behavior.
Actually thinking now I shouldn't have thrown in the second question. We don't absolutely need it yet -- that is, we don't need to pose this as a question these two people might be expected to answer. This way of posing the question is ambiguous between our description of what's going on and what they might think is going on. The latter is interesting, but I think we can wait.
We have one person saying "Pat's house is white," and the other saying, "Pat's house is black." (Definitive colors.) What are we to make of that?
I said we know immediately that at least one of them is wrong. Why? Presumably because we have accepted the limitation on models that they be consistent, which here means that there can be no model they might rely on that includes both "Pat's house is white" and "Pat's house is black."
Is that reasonable? If it is, we may have no choice but to give an account of how (a) the model I use, (b) the sentences I utter, and (c) the occasions upon which I utter them, are related. There are multiple possible explanations for the utterance of a sentence not in the model.
The issue here is not, how do we flesh out our account of language, because this isn't intended to be a complete account. It's that the only definite path toward truth we have found so far is an account of being wrong (which we hope will be useful). So far we've only established that one of these guys is wrong, but we don't know what that really means. For instance, it needn't mean diverging from the previously accepted model; it could be the divergent sentence is a correction, and wrong is staying with the given model.
Ah, I see you have already done some critique. Excellent. Here you move towards my view; that there is no model.
But I'll let you continue, at least for a bit. Good stuff.
But roughly, I'd use something like Davidson's argument in On the very idea... to show that there cannot be multiple models; and hence that the notion of a model is superfluous. But that might be where you are going...
There's no model? Or just one model? Which is it?
Read "model" for "conceptual scheme".
We use models all the time. Physicists regularly compare models, so it doesn't seem to be superfluous.
Yes and no.
No, in the sense that I'm not trying to build a complete model of language use, just enough to clarify questions about truth.
Yes, in that, if there are problems with such a partial model of language, we should land clearly and unambiguously right on top of them.
I might hold off on interjections and objections as you write, and await the conclusion.
I'm not suggesting that we can say nothing at all about our pre-linguistic experience; after all it is our experience. I believe we can understand it very well, but that when we attempt to articulate it in a precise way we are left with static representations that don't do justice to the dynamic actuality of experience..In the poetic vein we can also talk about how we imagine different animals might experience.
It is the languages of art, music and literature, particularly poetry, and not discursive analysis, which best evoke the living experience, in my view.
Oh good lord no!
I mean, suit yourself, if you just want to see how it plays out.
But I wasn't planning on doing it all myself. I'm not dribbling out something I've already got all of. I just wanted to do some setup people might agree to so disagreements could be clearer and a way to resolve them might be possible. Was hoping others would be pitching in once I got that out of the way.
How do we(or you) avoid anthropomorphism?
I can be more specific.
Can you offer a no-models account of disagreement, while I'm working (you know, for money) and mulling over what to say next, and others are thinking about -- and maybe even posting! -- their own accounts of disagreement?
Since it is always we who imagine or posit this or that about what we think or imagine animals might experience, can we avoid anthropomorphism?
Suppose they have radically, incommensurably, different models of the same thing.
How could we tell? What basis could we have for saying they were both models of the neighbourhood, if they had nothing in common?
It seems, then, that the models must have something in common if they are to be considered models of the neighbourhood. We must be able to say that this house, in one model, is the same as that house, in the other. There must be some basis for our being able to translate between the models, if we are to say they model the neighbourhood.
And inversely, if we can translate from one model to the other, then the models are in a sense the same.
Suppose instead that there are some small differences between the models, along the lines of the colour of the various houses Srap describes. In order to recognise that the colour of this or that house differs between models, we must be able to recognise that they represent the same house. To do this we perhaps recognise the streets, and the other buildings thereabouts. Overall, if we are going to recognise a difference between the models, we must be able to see the overall similarity.
We must conclude that the models cannot be so different that we cannot see the same things in both. We will make the most of the models if we interpret them in ways that maximise their agreement.
I'll pause there for a bit of ruminating.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Tate
For Davidson there is just one model (conceptual scheme), which he calls empiricism, the data of sense, although he doesn't realize that this supposed common coordinate system is one among many possible conceptual schemes, thinking instead that it is the way the empirical world speaks to all of us, regardless of our language. Contrary to Davidson, there are many conceptual schemes-models , not because of a presumed split between language and empirical world as he claims all conceptual relativists believe , but because the inseparability of model and world means that there are as many empirical worlds as there are models.
But how do we know any of this? What's our vantage point? Why not be satisfied with phenomenology?
I've managed to fall into a place where I get money enough for tea and biscuits while doing whatever I want. What's curious, in such circumstances, is how this alters what one wants.
So a slight sidestep.
Consider neighbourhood relativism. Suppose we do not have access to the neighbourhood, but instead only to the models of the neighbourhood.
In such a case, the difference between colours for a particular house cannot be held up against some common standard - the house - in order to decide which is preferred. Any differences become differences of opinion.
The argument above for substantial, indeed overwhelming, agreement, still holds. If you say the fence between our properties is brick, and I say it is wood, our models agree on things such as property and fences. We might proceed by comparing such inconsistencies as whether the fence was made of the same material as your house, but again this process assumes overwhelming agreement*.
Indeed, the agreement must be such that we might talk as if we access the same model, with some small differences.
Now the assumption was, in this post, that we do not have access to the neighbourhood. And our conclusion is that the models to which we each have access must be overwhelmingly the same.
And the final step, back in line, is to point out that the shared model we each access just is the neighbourhood.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's it.
Again, this is a child's version of the argument in On the very idea..., and while I am confident that Srap will recognise the parallels, if others do not follow the argument here, they ought take their differences up with the actual article rather than this post.
Time for more ruminating.
Edit: I might also simply decide that you use the word "brick" in the way I use the word "wood", that they have the same use.
Quoting Tate
I’m very satisfied with phenomenology( of the Husserlian sort). For Husserl the vantage point is always subjective.
“...one of the main tasks of pure intentional psychology is to make understandable, by way of the progressive reduction of world-validity, the subjective and pure function through which the world as the "world for us all" is a world for all from my—the ego's—vantage point, with whatever particular content it may have. ...”(Crisis, p.256)
Banno would argue that a vantage point implies a common coordinate system, but common is not the same thing as identical.
That's right, there is no model. Even I might agree with you on this. But this is because each particular instance of use is unique to itself. Adhering to this principle leaves what is in the mind as very difficult to understand. However, the solution is not to deny that there is anything in the mind.
Quoting Banno
I thought you were rejecting this talk about models. What giives?
Quoting Banno
Big mistake here. I thought you were rejecting models. But you just couldn't, you had to allow the model back in. Now, since you booted it out of the mind, it must be in the neighbourhood. What kind of nonsense is this? A model is artificial, constructed, fabricated, what do you make of all those parts of the neighbourhood which are natural?
Cool. That ego's vantage point won't allow you to say that model and world are one, will it?
Not the way I read it.
It looks like you're going beyond phenomenology to system building.
So, the big question. Isn't this Platonism, plain and simple? The entire universe is just a a model, a collection of ideas.
Something like that. And Banno would agree that common is not the same as identical. We agree more than we differ.
What does it mean to agree? What is the object of agreement? A sentence?
I don't really have an account of disagreement. Just some remarks. Probably somewhat close to @Joshs here.
If people can disagree on whether something is true or false, they've already gone most of the way toward agreement. The majority of disagreements are not quibbles about the facts, they are quibbles about the lenses through which we view the world. The majority of those quibbles about the lenses through which we view the world are also not about whether their constituents are true, or more often true, the majority of the time they are instead about whether they are appropriate, relevant, fit for task, permissible, understandable, intelligible, aesthetically pleasing, shite, exemplary or worth noting at all.
Some of those differences are much more fundamental than the others; disagreeing on whether something is permissible is quite different from disagreeing on whether something is intelligible. The former is a case like truth, in which most things are already fixed, the latter is not. So there are at least two types.
As a rough guide, it might be worthwhile partitioning disagreements into quibbles of fact, quibbles of relevance and quibbles of intelligibility. A quibble of fact will be when two people disagree on the truth of a claim, the accuracy of an approach, or whether something is fit for purpose. The distinguishing feature of a quibble of fact is that all quibbling parties are highly attuned to the same context, have the same vantage point on that context, and disagree about which one of a series of options obtains within that vantage. Black or white or blue, right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate.
Two paradigmatic example of a quibble of fact may be when a couple is having an earnest dispute over whether they can afford to eat at a restaurant one evening. Another example would be whether it's right to eat meat. The defining feature of the quibble isn't whether it's to do with truth or falsity or norms, it's about the background of the disagreement being fixed and two people having contrary takes on the same matter; fact value + subjective objective distinctions be damned.
A quibble of relevance is when two parties disagree more fundamentally than a quibble of fact, as they bring different vantage points to an issue which is the root of the conflict. A quibble of relevance is a conflict of broader conceptual frameworks and patterns of association that link individuals' worldviews together. The conflict arises from people systematising the world sufficiently differently in a scenario that they no longer can come to a quibble of fact about related issues without substantial exploratory work and the willingness to foster mutual understanding. A sign of a quibble of relevance is when quibblers bring much different facts, with much different styles of linkage between them, yet each appears to be directed towards the same issue. This is a disagreement within the same context.
Two paradigmatic examples of a quibble of relevance may be when a couple are having what feels like an earnest dispute over whether they can afford eating at a restaurant one evening; in this case however, this is really a dispute arising from one quibbler's simultaneous inability to be arsed to go out that evening and dislike of disappointing their partner through such a request; it must then be articulated through an impersonal, objective standard. Another example of this would be whether culturing individual and communal conduct is an essential part of the rules of ethical decision making; you will see it as necessarily relevant if you're into virtue ethics, but contingently so if you're a hedonist.
People will often behave as if they are in a quibble of fact, whereas they are actually in a quibble of relevance. It can be difficult to tell as misfiring connections between ideas, which people treat as if they are shared, tend to resist probing as they form part of the vantage by which probing is done. This is a disagreement on which context people operate within.
The final and most fundamental type of disagreement is a quibble of intelligibility. This is a case where two people's views on a scenario diverge so much that it would be almost impossible for one to understand the other. At least without living differently, or having had a different set of experiences. A common source of quibbles of intelligibility is when quibblers have much different embodied standpoints or life experiences. For example, a doting single parent of 5 and a widower antinatalist in a discussion of love for their children. While work can be done to commensurate their experiences, little can be done to address the fundamental difference in generative+maintenance mechanisms for quibblers' perspectives once one has developed. It takes work to establish any momentary bridge between these quibblers in any scenario related to their quibbling. A philosophical example may be (hopefully it doesn't derail the thread) those who easily intuit their experiences as qualia and those who do not. This is less of an individual disagreement, and more a fundamental difference in quibblers which tends to make them assign different contexts to the same information.
These types of quibbles form a hierarchy of constraints. Quibbles of intelligibility > quibble of relevance > quibble of fact. Currently having one in the list prevents the quibblers from having the quibbles higher up.
I believe any theory about recognising whether something is wrong from a disagreement could be done in one of two ways; you build up or you build down. Building up from fact to relevance to intelligibility, or going down from intelligibility to fact.
To my understanding, Davidson's procedure is bottom up; building the world iteratively through expressions linking to truth conditions through their meaning, and meaning (of sentences) being the agent of truth. The idea is to show that there are stable networks of facts, which allow productive disagreements and evaluation of relevance, that block the most severe quibbles of intelligibility from happening.
Building down is a more Heideggerian angle on it; quibbles of intelligibility happen, if they didn't there'd be no chance of having quibbles of relevance, quibbles of relevance happen, if they didn't there'd be no chance of having quibbles of fact, facts happen, so we can quibble about them. Intelligibility and perspective holding are also highlighted in this account.
A "model" in each case is a context of interpretation. Quibbles of fact have the same model shared between involved parties, quibbles of relevance have different models between involved parties, quibbles of intelligibility have different model generating mechanisms as well as different models between involved parties.[hide=*] (though quibbles of intelligibility are so confusing two people might "resolve" one through a quibble of fact but still not understand the other's viewpoint. I suspect this is quite common in politics, philosophy and moral values)[/hide]
We make the most of one another's posts by interpreting them in ways which maximise agreement...
Yes, and often the best way to maximise agreement is to gently focus on vital contrasts.
Like relevance and intelligibility being cognitive, conceptual, bodily and perceptual categories which impact interpretation of scenarios, whereas quibbles of fact tend to concern things which are easy to model as attitudes towards statements. Relevance impacts the assignment pattern of attitudes to statements of an individual or group, intelligibility impacts the assignment of an interpretive context itself to the scenario in which patterns of attitudes and fact like beliefs are formed.
I think @apokrisis is decently close to this as well - if you focus on what makes a context able to express stuff, you end up studying how lifeworlds/forms of life end up with stable patterns in them... Like norms of language itself. In some respect relevance and intelligibility are broader semiotic categories than those involved in the semantics of sentences.
Also, thanks for the "nice". : D
I’m agreeing with you that the ego's vantage point won't allow one to say that model and world are one.
If the shared model we each access just is the neighbourhood, then how does this account for the disagreement over the fence being brick or wood?
Is there any way this disagreement can be settled according to the “no models” view, without (re)introducing a model/neighbourhood distinction?
Not my forte, unfortunately.
The man's a philostudpher.
Yes, that's it precisely!
Quoting Banno
We have experiential access to what gives rise to the models we call "the neighbourhood"; the neighbourhood itself is never an object of perception, but only ever concept or model. That experiential access allows us to check if details of any model accord with what is to be seen.
Oh. :up:
Quoting Luke
Are you asking how to solve disagreements, or whence disagreement?
If solve, then rationality and force both will work, or even
Quoting Banno
If you are asking how they arise, the sources of disagreement are many and various.
I fail to see how any disagreement is possible regarding the material of the fence if we all share the same model, which just is the neighbourhood. And, on that basis, how can any disagreement be resolved?
Doesn’t this imply that we have different models, instead of sharing the same model which just is the neighbourhood?
Better still, doesn’t this imply that there is something independent of our models by which it doesn’t matter what it is called according to either model, it is the same thing?
Thanks. :up:
My point is all about bringing logic back into the real world by showing how it is in fact grounded in the brute reality of a pragmatic modelling relation.
The mystery of logic, truth, intentionality, etc, are that they are clearly in one sense free inventions of the human mind. They transcend the physical reality they then control. This is a puzzle that leads to idealism - including the idealising of logic as "just a free mathematical construction, which also seems to have a Platonic necessity about its axiomatic basis".
But semiotics makes it clear that this idealistic freedom is the result of the "epistemic cut" in which a code – some vocabulary of symbols that can be ordered by syntatic rules – is then able to "speak about reality" from outside that reality.
The word "possum" could mean anything. As physics – a sound wave, a reverberation, emitted by a vocal tract – it is just a meaningless noise. And a noise that is costless to produce. Or at least the metabolic cost is the same as what any other noise of a few syllables might cost us.
The physics of the world thus does not constrain the noises we make in any way. And that is why these noises can come to have their own idealistic world of meaning attached to them. We are free to do what the heck we like with these noises. We can create systems of rules – grammars and syntax – that formalise them into structures that bear meaning only for "us".
So idealism is made to be something that actually exists in the physical world because this world can't prevent costless noise patterns being assigned reality-independent meaning. Noise can be turned into information and there ain't a damn thing the world can do about that transcendent act of rebellion against its relentless entropy.
But then humans have to still live in the world and do enough to cover the actual small cost of speaking about the world in the free way that they do.
So the freedom of truth-making is in fact yoked to the profit that can be turned on being a speaking creature. It all has to reconnect to the physics. And of course, as human history shows, being speaking creatures living in shared communities of thought, in fact can repay an enormous negentropic dividend.
To the extent our model of the world is "true" – pragmatically useful – we gain power over the entropy flows of our environments and can bend them to our collective will.
The problem in the discussions here are that logic gets treated as something actually transcendent of this rooted, enactive, organismic reality of ours. But even logic – and information in general – is finding itself becoming properly reconnected in physics.
Turing invents universal computation? Computer science eventually matches that by showing reality has its fundamental computational limits. The holographic principle tells us any computation does have some Planck scale cost – a cost which is small, but not actually zero. And so try to build a computer with enough complexity to tackle really intensive problems and it would shrivel up into a black hole under its own gravity.
Information theory puts computing back firmly in the world it thought it had transcended.
And the same ought to be happening for logic.
Which is where semiotics comes in. It defines the line between rate independent information and rate dependent dynamics in a way that is biological rather than merely computational.
Logic as maths led to computers as logic engines. Blind hardware enslaved by blind software, with the human element – the intentionality and truth-making – once more floating off above the heads of all the physical action in some idealist heaven.
Semiotic approaches to truth-making discovers logic to lie in the way that the connection between models and their realities is reliant on the device of the mechanical switch. This is the fundamental grain of action because it is where the effort of executing an intent becomes symmetric with halting that intent. And so that intent becomes a free choice.
You can flick the light on or off. You can push the nuclear doomsday button or leave it alone. The greatest asymmetry between a choice and its result can be imposed on nature by making the metabolic cost of choosing option A over option B as entropically symmetric as possible.
To me, putting this modelling relation front and centre of the philosophy of logic would clear up the old truth-maker chestnuts forever. We could move on to more interesting things.
Mechanistic logic has confused people's metaphysics for quite a long time now. Roll on organismic logic. Let's reconnect to the systems view of reality that has been chuntering along in the background ever since Anaximander. Let's finally understand what Peirce was on about as he laid its general foundation.
On your first post, the first part of an argument against people who disagree each having their own model:
Before we get to that, I want to fill out this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What I had in mind was this: it is plausible that any individual has only imperfect access to the model of the world they've been working on, and they only imperfectly "translate" it into an utterance. In the case at hand, there are at least these possiblities:
In addition, if we presume the two speakers share a model, it's reasonable to expect they would actually only be familiar with non-identical proper subsets of the community-wide model. I may know that Pat's house is white, and that his front door is white, and assume that the back door is likewise white, while those that have seen it know it to be grey; I possess slightly less knowledge of Pat's house than some do, but I can readily extend my acquaintance with the shared model by being informed or seeing the back door for myself.
That should add at least one more possibility for those who have a single model disagreeing, that one of them knows and the other assumed or guessed or made a valid but unsound inference, etc., because he wasn't familiar with a part of their model that the other is. (Or maybe neither of them actually know and they're both bullshitting.)
On your account, what people say is presented as a perfect reflection of the model they are using, and that's tantamount to simply identifying the model with what they say.
On my account, differences in what we say are inconclusive evidence that we have different models. There may be other reasons (as above) why on this occasion we didn't end up saying the same thing. And this is so because, differences aside, what any one person says is an imperfect reflection of the model they use.
If that's so, it's hard right off to say whether an occasion of disagreement indicates two models or one in use. You've presented -- at least, along the way somewhere else -- the argument for there being one. That was also more or less @fdrake's reading of Davidson, in part. I'll have to think a while about what, in my test-bed here, multiple models would look like and whether we can tell the difference between that and a single one. --- Should probably say here more clearly: above I suggested there is community-constructed model that it is something like the union of all the models actually in use by individuals, each of whom is familiar with only a proper subset of that union; I'm inclined to consider that another access issue and say individuals familiar with different subsets of a single model share just one, but I'd be open to arguments that these should be considered different, if consistent, models. I'm not sure it much matters what you say here.
And then there's your main point, that the argument for no models runs through a single shared model just being unnecessary, that the only conceivable use for the model talk in the first place was if competing models were in the offing. If we all have the same one, we don't need that one and can just all have the same nothing.
I'm inclined to pause here and wonder whether the model, even if singular, is doing work that just the raw corpus of utterances can't. For instance, I can say that I deviated in speech from my model because of a priming effect, or misremembering, or misunderstanding the context. ("Oh Pat's house. Yeah, it's white.") What does the no-models account say? Most of the time I say one thing, but on this occasion I say something else, and --- and what? Why did I deviate? It seems to me the idea of a model gives you at least a start on dispositions to speak in certain ways, dispositions that are not absolute guarantees. But on the no-models view, I just say stuff, and what I "believe" is represented by whatever I said most recently or whatever I say most commonly, or who knows what.
And perhaps now that I've dropped the B-word, we should look a little again at what the word "model" was doing for me. It is frankly representational -- I don't know how else to take "model." If we do develop such models of the world, and happen to use language as a medium for doing so -- no doubt necause of its considerable efficiency and portability compared to other media -- then, while language is the medium of the model, I need not use it only for producing speech. It can be simply how I store a considerable portion of my knowledge, and my knowledge I can rely on in doing many more things than speaking. I can also use it to store hypotheses, possible but uncertain extensions of my knowledge, which I can act on to confirm or disconfirm, and so on.
If there is no model, but only my speech behavior, then to do any of these things in which I rely on my linguistic knowledge, I must, presumably, speak to myself about them. Now I talk to myself a lot, but I don't have to form the sentence "Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming," much less speak it, even sotto voce, to remember that it is. Do we perhaps engage in silent and unconscious speech in order to retrieve the facts we know?
That begins to look a bit like a "language of thought," which, oddly, is where my use of language as model medium seems to be headed. It's natural to talk about at least some of our knowledge being stored linguistically only because so much of it is acquired linguistically or is intrinsically linguistic. "Cheyenne" and "Wyoming" are after all names, related in certain ways, which, in this case, are in part purely matters of convention and thus linguistic. My knowledge that Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming has no option but to be a bit of linguistic knowledge.
But the issue that arises next is obvious: I have considerable knowledge of my native language which I rely on in order to speak it. If that knowledge is not stored linguistically, how can I possibly speak my native language? How could I ever "whisper" to myself, even unconsciously, that Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming, if I cannot call on my knowledge of English to do that, because I cannot conceivably remind myself linguistically how to speak?
Some of those arguments may not be very good, I dunno. I'm not sure where we are, now, but at least there's now something in the neighborhood of an argument for my initial assumption, that we use language as a medium with which to build a model of the world, which was unargued for to start with.
I hope we're not quite there yet, but if we are at the point where none of the not-really-disagreeing explanations work, then we may be forced to say that one of our two speakers has said something false, although at the moment we don't know which one. There are worse solutions than, as both @Banno and Herodotus said, going and looking for yourself. As things are in my little test-bed, the model is in part a matter of convenience, and I'm still in a position to compare it directly to what it is a model of -- I can test at least some of it in the most direct way imaginable.
This is already covering a lot of ground, so I'll stop, but there ought to be more on what's happened here, whether I had an idiosyncratic and inaccurate model, and so on. But it looks like it's getting much harder here, so I wonder if we can take a step back and simplify things again.
Quickly, this is probably right, but for my purpose here it's facts that matter, if facts are going to be how we talk about truth. As I understand your hierarchy, differences at any of the three levels may present as a disagreement over facts or truth, but the disagreement must be resolved at the level at which it originates, so only disagreements that are simply about facts are resolvable at the level of facts.
That's also plausible, but at this point, I don't even know how best to characterize what a disagreement over facts is, much less resolve it, much less discern its origin. I want to try to stick to my little model a bit longer to force myself to say exactly what's going on if I can, rather than take anything for granted.
The sentences are equivalent in the sense that they are satisfied by the same object(s). Whereas redundancy is a philosophical view about usage.
Quoting Michael
Yes, Tarski endorsed the correspondence theory of truth. Sher notes this at the beginning of the chapter where she says:
Quoting Truth, The Liar, and Tarski's Semantics - Gila Sher (from Blackwell's A Companion to Philosophical Logic)
--
Quoting fdrake
Yes, it's meant as fleshing out a correspondence theory - see the above quote. But that wasn't Tarski's only goal. As Sher goes on to say:
Quoting Truth, The Liar, and Tarski's Semantics - Gila Sher (from Blackwell's A Companion to Philosophical Logic)
I believe there isn't much agreement amongst philosophers on that. Tarski himself says in The Semantic Conception of Truth:
So it seems to me at least that he doesn't endorse the correspondence theory but does endorse the Aristotelian theory, which he thinks of as different.
Snow is white iff snow appears white, or
Snow is white iff snow reflects all wavelengths of light, or
Snow is white iff snow has a mind-independent sui generis property of whiteness, etc.
We can then bring this back to truth-predication by understanding that if "p" is true iff p and if p iff q then "p" is true iff q.
"Snow is white" is true iff snow appears white, or
"Snow is white" is true iff snow reflects all wavelengths of light, or
"Snow is white" is true iff snow has a mind-independent sui generis property of whiteness, etc.
How isn't it just a more substantial account of p?
Because "p" is true iff p. Therefore a substantial account of p is a substantial account of "p" is true.
Deflation, or inflation?
Oh my God! "True" is being defined as "pragmatically useful" now. This gives free reign to dishonesty, sophistry, and deception, because when these intentions are the prevailing interest (Trumpism for example), they rule as the truth under this definition.
Quoting Michael
This description of the Aristotelian theory of truth does not delve deep enough to reveal the serious problem which Aristotle exposed.
"Truth" speaks of "states of affairs", as you say, "what is", and "what is not", being and not being. But reality has many examples of becoming, change. And what Aristotle demonstrated is that becoming is fundamentally incompatible with the descriptive principles of "what is", and "what is not". This results in the need to relinquish the law of excluded middle, allowing change, or "becoming" to occupy that place where this law is violated, the place of "neither is nor is not". The inclination to enforce the law of excluded middle, without exception, allows sophists to produce all sorts of absurd conclusions about what is real.
The demonstration provided by Aristotle goes something like this. If state of affairs A changes, and becomes state of affairs B, then we need to propose something intermediate between A and B which would refer to the change itself. If this were another state of affairs, we could describe it as C. And C would be the state which exists between A and B as the change from one to the other. But then we would need to propose states between A and C, and between C and B, to account for the change from state A to state C, and from state C to state B. Then we'd need to place other states between A and C, etc.. As you can see, this need to place another state between the two described states, to account for the change from one state to another, would proceed infinitely, and we would never actually be describing "the change" from one state to another, we'd only be describing a progression of states.
The conclusion is that change, or becoming, is fundamentally different from "states of affairs" and cannot be properly described in terms of "what is", and "what is not". This exposes the need for a dualism, and Aristotle's proposal of hylomorphism, in which "form" is the category for states of affairs, and "matter" is the category for becoming, or change.
Quoting Michael
Sure, but if we remove "true" from the equation, then we are off topic of the thread, which is a discussion of truth.
Refresh the page, I’ve made an edit.
Right, but q could become an endless string of proposals for the necessary conditions of "truth", as we're already experiencing in this thread anyway.
Makes sense. I think that's a worthwhile thing to do Srap. I wanted to put that there largely to muddy the waters, so we don't lose track entirely of the shape of things while pulling on the thread. The "secret motivation" I have for that is I'm suspicious that a sentence+truth based account would break when it starts needing ideas about the other levels.
Well that's true of any "X is Y iff Z" so I don't understand that objection.
I just think saying something like "Snow is white" is true iff snow reflects all wavelengths of light is more meaningful than saying something like "Snow is white" is true iff snow is white and so might help us better understand the concept of truth.
Or maybe it will lead us to the redundancy view that truth-predication is vacuous, even if a grammatically useful tool (e.g. so that we can say such things as "what you say is true").
We were warned, not to extend logic so far it needs bringing back:
“....Because, however, the mere form of a cognition, accurately as it may accord with logical laws, is insufficient to supply us with material (objective) truth, no one, by means of logic alone, can venture to predicate anything of or decide concerning objects, unless he has obtained, independently of logic, well-grounded information about them, in order afterwards to examine, according to logical laws, into the use and connection, in a cohering whole, of that information, or, what is still better, merely to test it by them.
Now it may be taken as a safe and useful warning, that general logic, (...) teaches us nothing whatever respecting the content of our cognitions, but merely the formal conditions of their accordance with the understanding, (conditions) which do not relate to and are quite indifferent in respect of objects; any attempt to employ it as an instrument in order to extend and enlarge the range of our knowledge must end in mere prating; any one being able to maintain or oppose, with some appearance of truth, any single assertion whatever....” (CPR A61,2/B85,6)
...
Quoting Banno
There's much at issue here, but this first. You've gone from what ought to be the case, to what is the case.
Your claim (correct me if I'm wrong) is that we cannot justifiably claim that the two models are of the same house without there being a completely commensurate 'house'. I don't object to that.
Then you say that because we can't claim this justifiably, there must actually be a shared, or commensurate 'house'.
But why must there? Why not the other option - that we, in fact, cannot justifiably claim both models are of the same house, but that we just do so anyway...justification go hang!
And the problem with that would be...?
Yes, that seems to be the case. They are based on fairly technical discussions of what constitutes correspondence, with a good review here (Truth, Correspondence, Models, and Tarski - Panu Raatikainen, 2007).
Quoting Michael
Tarski was certainly critical of modern correspondence formulations, but also said that "One speaks sometimes of the correspondence theory of truth as the theory based on the classical conception.":
Quoting Truth and Proof - Tarski, 1969
He also says, preceding that, "Nonetheless, it is my feeling that the new formulations,
when analyzed more closely, prove to be less clear and unequivocal than the one put forward by Aristotle."
I guess this is why nobody can agree on whether he was a correspondence theorist or not. Ironically he's less clear and unequivocal than we'd like.
The objective seems unclear here. What would a model of language be outside of discussion about what idioms (among other expressions) mean?
Earlier you said...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
...You seem to take 'language' and 'what expressions mean' to be two different matters and yet I can't see what you could mean by the former other than the latter.
I wonder if this helps us address the redundancy view.
1. "'Snow is white' is true" means "snow is white"
2. "Snow is white" means "snow reflects all wavelengths of light"[sup]1[/sup]
3. Therefore, "'snow is white' is true" means "snow reflects all wavelengths of light"[sup]1[/sup]
If (2) is true but (3) is false then (1) is false, and the redundancy view refuted.
Or perhaps (2) is false, and that even if snow is white iff snow reflects all wavelengths of light, "snow is white" doesn't mean "snow reflects all wavelengths of light", in which case there is still the issue of explaining what "is white" means. Although perhaps that's a topic for another discussion.
[sup]1[/sup] Replace with whichever "snow is white" means "q" is correct
At the very beginning, I compared linguistic models to other sorts. If Pat's house is white, when you build a scale model of Pat's neighborhood, you paint Pat's house white ((that is, the model of Pat's house!)); when you build a linguistic model of Pat's neighborhood, you include in that model the sentence "Pat's house is white."
There, we're talking about decisions the model-builder makes. If you apply a particular color to your scale-model of Pat's house, what justifies your choice is that you know what color Pat's house is; it's the same with including "Pat's house is white" in your linguistic model. If you're not sure, when it comes time to paint or to pick your predicate, you can go and look, or ask someone you believe knows.
If your model, scale or linguistic, is faithful, someone who doesn't know can learn from it. You could show someone your scale model of Pat's neighborhood and point out Pat's house, and they might say, "Oh, I didn't know Pat's house was white." You can infer the state of Pat's house from a faithful model of it. If the model is very accurate, you can infer from it the exact shade of white that Pat's house is. There are probably some natural limits there; I might tell you it's not exactly the shade I used in my model, but it's close, that I couldn't exactly match the shade or didn't even try.
A static model like this is clearly a way of storing knowledge. If I need to know the layout of Pat's neighborhood for some reason, but have trouble remembering it all, I can make a model of it, encoding my knowledge to make it more accessible. I could walk around the neighborhood with pencil and paper and make myself a map, Pat's house there, left of him is so-and-so, and who's up on the corner? is that Joe's house? You needn't, at this point, write "Joe's house" on the map, but can go and check. (No, this is Miriam's house (write it down), so where's Joe's house?) You can, in this way, assemble acquirable-sized chunks of knowledge into a whole that you could not acquire in one go.
It is perhaps notable that even the process of model building is subject to failures of execution. People mistype numbers into spreadsheets with alarming regularity. I might have specifically checked the color of Pat's house, but then painted it the wrong color because the lighting in my model room is weird, or I let too much time pass before painting and got confused about what color I determined on my field trip, and so on. Someone could point out my error to me ("Hey, I thought Pat's house is white") and I could even agree with them before they point out that I painted it light blue. ("Grabbed the wrong bottle, I guess.")
The question would be whether this sort of thing really extends to linguistic models: is it really possible that you could know Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming but store "Casper is the capital of Wyoming," not just mistakenly retrieve "Casper" or misspeak for some other reason, but store the wrong thing mistakenly. That looks really dubious to me. If your knowledge here is in linguistic form, knowing is exactly a matter of storing the right sentence; you cannot store the wrong one and still be said to know the right one.
Unless it is possible to store both, even though they're inconsistent. And that certainly happens. It's why teachers used to talk about the rule, never write the wrong answer on the blackboard -- students will sometimes remember what they saw on the board but forget that it was an example of what not to do.
So it could be that "Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming" is what I know, and is stored as such, but "Casper is the capital of Wyoming" is something I heard someone mistakenly say once, and it's also stored as a memory, or maybe I just know that Casper is another town in Wyoming beginning with "C". I can't have stored anything about Casper if I don't know anything about Casper, even if that's only what someone said.
The whole point of a model is that it represents my knowledge; if it doesn't at least do that -- and sometimes models don't -- that's a particular sort of failing. But if your knowledge is linguistic, and your model is linguistic, there is no step of "translation" to screw up; the linguistic object you store is exactly the thing you know. (I'm a little leery of this argument, strong as it is, because we have no grounds to assume further that all knowledge is linguistic and stored in a linguistic model. That's clearly false, since we also know, remember, and recognize images, scents, textures, and so on.)
That may provide support to the no-models view, but as I noted above, we are likely also to have stored or otherwise be able to produce sentences that are inconsistent with our knowledge. And that forces us to confront issues the no-models view wanted to sidestep:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The question is whether a sentence I am familiar with represents something I know -- and that's precisely this second-order issue of whether it's part of my model of the world or not. It is of value to me to be able to store and produce sentences that are not representations of my knowledge: it is how I know what someone else mistakenly believes; it is how I hypothesize in the absence of knowledge, and so on. But that means I may not always be certain whether a sentence I have to hand is part of my total knowledge or not.
I think we can in both principle and practice.
It takes knowledge of what the difference is between language less creatures' belief and language users'. We need a standard for what language less animals can and/or cannot think and/ believe. One thing is certain; language use is the key for establishing what they cannot.
Just joining in this new trend of quoting one's self rather than one's actual interlocutors.
Quite satisfying.
I think the psychological reality of belief undermines notions of "storage" -- a computer can store information and retrieve it, and we can store ledgers within book cases, but a mind doesn't store memories or models. Memories are re-creations, and they change with the context we find ourselves in, which itself changes drastically from time to time, but is always a re-enactment rather than a retrieval. We inhabit similar patterns, patterns feed into other patterns, and so over time it seems our life can take on a sort of form-through-time. But it moves and changes unexpectedly and even subtly at times, the habits of our life and the environment which influences those habits -- and I'd say belief is nothing more than a habit.
Which means there is no place we hold our models, except perhaps in books -- such as text books that we refer to and utilize pedagogically. We might keep a journal or more formal writings, like philosophers and scientists tend to, but we don't refer to the journal in making decisions or recalling beliefs or in following through on our patterns except in limited circumstances that are related (such as philosophical or scientific circumstances). And so, at least for creatures like ourselves in the day-to-day, there simply is no model of the world. We can repeat to ourselves what the world is like -- such as at a church with fellow believers -- to make it seem like there's something stable there, however I'd contend these are rituals and habits we perform in order to re-conjure feelings. That is, the notion of a "model" is parasitic upon our language-use, and hence, the kind of truth that we utilize when not referring to text books and such -- the kind of truth that's embedded within language, as I've been contending.
I think that the correspondence theorists would have us tell what's on the other side of language, but that's just it -- there's nothing there that's linguistic, therefore nothing there that deals with truth. The reason we say the things we say are bounded to the contexts we're speaking within, and the habit-pattern we re-conjure when talking about truth is the game of truth-telling.
In the game of truth-telling truth and falsity are already understood as linked together as one. In fact, the game relies upon truth before truth-telling. But there's still the speaker (whose statement is to be evaluated), the listener (who has an interest in the truth-value of the speaker's sentence), and a notion of a judge (as a child it was the father/mother, but as we grow up there's usually some judge we can appeal to if we aren't satisfied with the original outcome of the game, except in the horrible circumstances of marriage ;))
I think it's the judge that "grounds" the game -- and the judge can just as easily be a "judge", a knowledge of what your interlocutor would like to hear and what you'd like to get out of the game of truth-telling rather than an actual person in the flesh. What counts as true is what the judge would count as true -- so there are certain things a judge might like to see to evaluate some sentence.And that's where correspondence comes into the game of truth telling, as the abstract story of "going to take a look for oneself" as an impartial judge might.
But sometimes consistency will play a role rather than correspondence ("I have been a life long union member, and you think I would cross a picket line?"), or pragmatics ("I may not know exactly why you need to shake this for 20 seconds before adding, but it works!"). In the case of the game of truth-telling, however, I think the T-sentence lets on what each of these has in common -- that it is an utterance in a context that bears the truth predicate. And, even more, that you can remove the truth-predicate when an utterance is being used rather than evaluated.
Correspondence is a generalized story of one of the instances for evaluating an utterance. It removes the characters and describes the action of going to take a look in an abstract story. So it fits the stories of the form "going to take a look", but it doesn't fit the other stories (and methodologies for justification)
Now, in the sciences especially, we keep a store of propositions which have gone through a more sophisticated version of the game of truth-telling. But I think that truth itself, and knowledge for that matter, has to be simpler than science. The notion of a model fits an institutionalized knowledge-production factory, ala the academies. It doesn't fit "Today is Tuesday" (which I regularly must check my storage devices to get right, and never do I ever keep a belief of which day it is constantly in mind) -- and on the whole I think our psychologies are such that we don't hold onto beliefs. We don't check them and put them into our box of knowledge. We let go of beliefs as fast as we hold onto them and upon needing them again we re-create them, and they are re-created in light of us speaking to someone.
Which, I think for me, gets at why I don't like the talk of models. Models make sense for a community-wide group of scholars who write down and argue over the truth of propositions and have a place where they store true propositions, but not so much for minds and beliefs and such.
Already objecting to my thoughts here, but I'm going to let them sit to see if there's progress here: Though, perhaps, if truth is embedded in language, and meaning "ain't in the head", the psychological reality is off-topic? On the whole I tend to think of knowledge as a social product, so I'm not opposed to that (and "to know", in that case, is to believe the communally baptized set of propositions, separating knowledge from knowing) -- but it'd be important to make explicit that truth and knowledge are not mental, in that case.
Don't be so snooty. I did it to show the links between posts that were always intended to be linked.
Wonderful!
I have lots to say about the lots you said, but it'll be a little while.
Hey, you've no need to explain yourself to me. You crack on in whatever way you see fit. It was a post for my own amusement.
Why do I feel like you may have argued somewhere that all off our posts are for our own respective amusement...
Maybe you're about to, and I've time-slipped again. Hmmmm.
Something like that, I expect. It sounds like the sort of thing I'm prone to saying. I shan't bore everyone with a repeat in that case...
I might start just posting...
"Narratives"
...in response to everything and let people fill in the rest as they see fit.
Guy gets sent to prison and his first night inside he hears guys up and down the cell-block calling out a number now and then, followed by scattered chuckling from the other cons. He asks his cellmate what's going on.
"Well, some of us have been in here so long, we've heard all of each other's jokes, so we numbered 'em. That's what you're hearing."
Guy says, "That's pretty interesting. Can I try it?" When his cellmate nods, he calls out "47."
Crickets.
"Geez, am I in trouble? Are new guys not allowed?"
"Nah, you told it wrong."
Ha! Not heard that one.
I'd be lucky, though, if '47' were one of my options... Might make it to 4.
I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case for all of us.
I think this is exactly where I disagree.
It's become clear to me that the key ingredient in the model is knowledge. Step 1 in building a model is, what do we know?
Knowledge is precisely that belief-like state that persists over time without being recreated, reimagined, or re-experienced. We have imperfect access to the knowledge we possess, and we can lose knowledge, but the knowledge we possess we possess continuously.
Quoting Moliere
Yeah that's exactly the issue between us. Truth is slightly to one side here, but yes indeed knowledge is a mental state.
That's a big discussion, but I'm happy that we've landed on a very specific point of disagreement. That's just the sort of thing I was hoping for.
Against my model (of truth), I'd say that knowledge which is not based on correspondence -- the sort of knowledge which uses the cabinet or box metaphor for beliefs -- could very well be mental. There's an interaction between the mental and the material social product I call knowledge (basing it on science), and folk-knowledge is not stored in a filing cabinet anywher. Folk-knowledge is more akin to communal habits and cues and scripts. Collective memory, by my model of memory at least, would require rituals and repetitions and such and would count as mental -- but there'd be no correspondence in this case.
But that would mean we still disagree on psychologies, even when we are talking about the mental -- where basically I think of memory and beliefs-held as a creative process that is re-enacted, you'd say that we can recall the real knowledge we have and that that at least is not a re-creation, but a has-been-created.
Do I have that right?
Quoting Moliere
That's an interesting contrast. It looks to me like @Moliere is construing a belief as an ephemeral mental state, whereas @Srap Tasmaner is construing belief as a continual behavioural disposition. It strikes me that these ideas are not in direct conflict. This is because it could be the case that a continual behavioural disposition comes equipped with the ability to recreate the state of mind and action to exhibit what is believed as a transitory state.
I have some hesitations about calling some items of knowledge purely mental, and some items of knowledge purely behavioural. EG, I can't seem to find the thought of where my e key is when I'm typing, but when I'm programming recreating enough of the state of a script to 'put it in mind' seems to happen when debugging or adding something.
Even if you want to say, as I've been inclined to lately, that knowledge is not a kind of belief but a "first class" mental state in its own right, distinct from belief -- which is enough to keep our positions from conflicting -- we may still want to say that knowledge entails belief. (I'm undecided, but I see the appeal.) If S knows p, then S believes p -- and that can be true even if you don't analyze knowledge as belief + some other stuff.
Which in terms of psychology might come out as you describe -- and we might experience knowledge roughly this way.
Not that I'm ready to plump for knowledge as a disposition to entertain particular beliefs, but that might be the psychology.
I am mindful that we are talking about ideas in the form of words when we talk about belief or knowledge. We have common usage, to be sure, but just what that is is not so easy to establish. We have all heard these words used many times in many different situations and contexts, and I think we probably all form our own idiosyncratic senses of what they denote.
For me, then, to know is to be certain. I have come to think that knowledge cannot be fallible; if something we think is knowledge turns out to be mistaken, then it either never was knowledge or the conditions have changed such that it no longer qualifies as knowledge. We can feel certain that we know this or that, but can we ever be certain? What could being certain mean? So, if all we can manage is feeling certain, can we ever be said to know anything? I'm inclined to say that all we can be certain of is that what seems to be present right now seems to be present right now. This is not to say anything at all about what that which seems to be present "really" is.
So, our experience moment to moment is absolutely certain; not in the sense that it is definitely this or that, but just in the sense that it is our present awareness or lack of awareness. For the rest we move among our collective representations, claiming this or claiming that, as if anything could ever be definitively established. At least our discourse hangs there long enough for us to be able to play these assertoric and possibilistic games.
Though he was, at least, clear and unequivocal that the sentence, "Tarski is a correspondence theorist" is true iff Tarski is a correspondence theorist. :wink:
Hang your head in shame, Andrew.
I've just never found this compelling. I always immediately think of cases where people are as confident as they can imagine being, what they would naturally describe as "certain," and they're wrong, or cases where someone nurses unwarranted doubts about knowing what they do indeed know.
It always seems to me that certainty is just a different thing that may or may not accompany knowledge. I suppose we might say that if you know that p, you're entitled to be certain that p, and probably even certain that you know that p, but being entitled to judge or to feel (whichever version we're using) is just not the same as in fact judging or feeling.
I think there are straightforward, persuasive counterexamples to the idea that you can't be certain of anything, but the first ones that leap to mind are backwards. Do you know the population of the county where you live? I don't know mine. In fact, I'm absolutely certain I don't know mine.
You see no problem in allowing deception to be truth? Personally, I like to keep my truths free from deception. That is my preference, and I think it's because I have a will of my own. And, I do not like to be taken advantage of. For me, that's where the problem is, if we allow deception to reign as truth, it provides the means for others to take advantage of me.
But if you don't mind your honest beliefs being the product of deception, I really don't mind that. Do you have a free will?
I think I misread @Moliere actually, am I right in thinking that your account places less stress on beliefs being mental states, and more on the process of recreating a competence? It doesn't matter so much if beliefs are "mental furniture", it just matters that some process recreates them. If someone has the capacity to recreate a competence, or a tendency to behave/process as if a given thing is true, then they can be said to believe it. Does that sound about right?
I would say that in the former kinds of cases, they don't know, but merely believe that they know. Remember that saying certainty is necessary for knowledge does not entail it is sufficient, and that feeling certain does not equate to justifiably being certain.
In the latter kinds of cases I would say the information is there, but access to it is not, and I would not count such a condition as knowing. To count as knowing, I would say it is necessary to have the appropriate information; in other words to know that you know.
The question I would ask you is whether you can think of any examples where someone could be said to know something without feeling certain, as well as justifiably being certain, about it. Also I want to remind you that I acknowledge that any knowledge is relative to contexts, so I am not wanting to bring the possibility of radical skepticism to bear on the issue, because that would be to demand of all knowledge that it somehow be absolute, independent of all context, which I think is obviously absurd.
It wasn't a rhetorical question.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How so?
I find this exchange baffling and I wonder if you'd each indulge me in explaining a couple of the presuppositions you're working from.
You seem to be working from the principle that there's a right answer to the question of 'how the mind works' in this regard - I gather that from the fact that you're critiquing each others' models, not just curating them.
You seem to be working with a presumption that how your mind works is not radically different from how my mind works or each other's minds work - I'm getting this, again from the fact that you're critiquing rather than curating, so each of you is capable of making a wrong statement about how minds work.
Then you seem to be working toward this shared notion of how minds work by thinking about it, not by examining some quantity of actual minds, removing variables, examining differences etc.
I can't seem to reconcile the two sides.
Surely if two of you (assuming even one of you is right) can be wrong about how minds work as a result of their introspection of their own mind, then introspection delivers both wrong as well as right impressions of how your own mind works, about two thirds of the time, at least? (the only other options being 'everyone's mind works differently', or 'there's no right answer to how the mind works')
So if introspection delivers both correct and incorrect answers as to how the mind works, what motivates the methodology here? By what means do you propose the results of introspection are tested to see which are right and which are wrong? More introspection? That's just going to deliver about the same proportions of right and wrong answers.
I guess what I'm missing, fascinating though your personal accounts are, is what you're each looking for in the others' accounts to say "that doesn't sound right". All you seem to have is three conflicting accounts (which together tell us nothing other than that introspection is not a reliable means of determining how minds work, at least 2 out of 3 times it's wrong), and no means of choosing between them.
I want a definition of truth but for that I must already posses a definition of truth!
Oh, and one last thing. About the status of 'the mind' in the world. Real entity or not?
Because each of you seem quite strongly realist about worldly objects, no enacted constructions for you guys, if you want to know what colour the house is, you just look. Anyone saying it's blue is wrong because it's white, etc.
So am I right in assuming that for you, 'the mind' is not a real entity? After all, none of you are proposing we 'just look' to find out how it works (unless you think your sample of three is statistically significant, or, as ruled out before, you think everyone's mind works differently and there's no right or wrong answer)
I think going into this would derail the thread. If you want an answer to it, I'd gesture towards that analysing concepts and comparing intuitions doesn't need you to do experiments. If you genuinely are confused by it, you seemed to understand the methodology behind some Dennett vs Chalmers arguments people've had on the forum. It's the same thing, only we're worse at it.
If you want more of a theoretical gloss on it, I think discussions like this are useful from the perspective of building a bridge between manifest and scientific images. Will quote at length from SEP below, from the article on Sellars. tl;dr for the quote, it's still worthwhile examining concepts and intuitions because doing so also influences how folk metaphysics places constraints on experiments you'd do later - the metaphysical imagination suffusing folk and non-folk theories alike.
[hide="Quote"]
[/hide]
Then we'll leave it there. Thanks anyway for the reply.
No worries, if you feel like making a thread about it, it would be a good discussion. Isaac vs the very idea of analysing concepts in philosophy!
At bottom I've said belief is a habit -- so it could be a mental habit, it could be a physical habit -- so yes I think that sounds right. Though I don't know if I'd say competence as much as pattern or habit. We have cues and scripts which we've memorized through repetition, so they take on a kind of form (seem like we have a cabinet we put our knowledge into and pull it out), but the form isn't like a storage device where the model sits and we can pull it out at some other time. The script can be rewritten when we're not looking, and even improvised when we are looking.
I think primarily I'm pushing against the metaphysics of memory as a model which we update. In an institution I think you can get something like that. But for our beliefs that aren't put through an institutional system of scrutiny? Those just don't have that same stability, in my experience. "Today is Tuesday" is already a belief I've let go of several times yesterday, and now let go of entirely. I didn't put that belief in my modular closet or a book or a paper or something.
I'd say most of our beliefs fall into that class. The beliefs that appear like correspondence are the sorts we find in academies and such -- but that process of knowledge is too high a standard for our everyday. It would be impossible to function like that.
:D
I'd say that all methodologies give both right and wrong answers -- what makes them methodologies is that they resolve disputes, not that they deliver right or wrong answer.
Here we're at an interesting intersection because of how little we share, in terms of a background of beliefs. There's no methodology in place. It's anarchy. Even our basic beliefs about how minds work can be at odds with one another. (in fact, one might say that if we fail here, it's due to a difference in conceptual schemes about conceptual schemes, thereby undermining Davidson. the anti-realist's best move is quietism, because then Davidson has nothing to point to to say we have a shared scheme -- nothing to radically interpret back to himself)
I agree with @fdrake that we're not necessarily at odds -- but by stating our positions and starting to pick at them, that's how one begins to build a network of background beliefs from which one can then create methodologies. So obviously, yes, I have an opinion here, but I'm attempting to maneuver in such a way that leaves it open to be added to or changed or taken away as seen fit by those so interested. And my main point of contention here is with the notion of a model that we update within our memory -- so it's more how we're picturing memory here than how The Mind works, if that makes sense.
Thanks. I know people are concerned about this derailing the thread, so I'll be brief, but wanted to at least respond.
The question I really wanted answered (which I maintain is pertinent to the question about truth, but if not could hopefully be answered very briefly to assist my following your process here) was... What kind of entity do you see the mind being such that it is
a) real
...but...
b) possessed of properties which are determinable by agreement among introspecting parties.
If I looked at my duck pond and said "ducks are white", we have two approaches to critiquing the claim.
We could take a radically relativist approach and say, "yeah, ducks are white, for you, that's part of what the word 'duck' means in your language game and if it functions, then OK"
Or we could say "ducks are part of the world and they're either white or not, we'd have to check"
The latter I take to be the realist case you seem to espouse.
Yet such a check cannot then consist of one looking at one's own duck pond and saying "nah, ducks are black". That's just exactly the same type of claim we just rejected as ignoring the shared world of ducks.
Replace duck pond with mind. You get the picture.
@Srap Tasmaner has Pat's house as white. Let's say it seems green to me, and it seems grey to you. No amount of agreement between us regarding what colour Pat's house seems to us to be is capable (under a hard realist assumption) of yielding facts about what colour Pat's house actually is. It's immune to our agreement about the colour it seems to us to be.
Yet you're treating the mind as both real, but unlike Pat's house, with properties that are discernible (or at least investigable) by agreement between parties as to the way it merely seems to them to be.
I'm just wondering what kind of entity this is, for you. What sort of thing it is you're speculating about the function of.
I think you're construing the discussion as introspecting about the nature of mental states, whereas (if I'm following), when it relies on introspection about mental states or behaviours, it's relies on them as observations in a context. It isn't as if we're doing the whole Cartesian thing of solipsistically examining the preconditions of our thoughts, it's that we've got a partially shared but conflicted mutual understanding of an issue. Is this the kind of issue which even is amenable to direct answer by experiment? I doubt it, in the same manner that "cognition" and "aroused state" have observable analogues but there's a whole, underdetermined, theory linking physiological and behavioural observations to those constructs. If you wanted to critique an experiment into cognition or aroused states, one way of showing a flaw in it would be a tenuous relationship of the theorised construct to the observations; and that's a matter of relevance and interpretation as well as observation.
Would you be similarly baffled by people talking about a society and saying it works partly through norms of conduct? "But the norms are observable", "Yes, and you need to tell me what kind of entity they are before any of this makes any sense whatsoever!"
It wasn't a rhetorical answer either.
Quoting Isaac
But I do not believe that you don't already grasp the answer to this question yourself, so I can't help but think that you are being dishonest here. Anyway, I'll answer it for you, and you can tell me if it's consistent with what you believe.
Through deception a person can make me think that they are helping me to achieve my goals, and get me to do things I wouldn't otherwise do. Then it will turn out that the person had no real intention of helping me achieve any of my goals, and those things I have done for that person will prove to have been a waste of time and money, and this is actually detrimental to achieving my own goals, counterproductive. That's how deception provides the means for one to take advantage of me.
Quoting Isaac
You should acknowledge that this is extremely faulty logic. Two out of three people being wrong once, out of an unspecified number of judgements, does not produce the conclusion of being wrong two thirds of the time. The number of judgements could be millions, with only two instances of them being wrong.
In other words, you completely misrepresent introspection, as producing a one time judgement, when in reality it is an ongoing process with multitudes of judgements.
Quoting Isaac
The methodology can be described as faith in logic. We take simple principles of logic, and apply them with faith in them, without the need to test the conclusions. We have faith in the logic so we accept the conclusions without testing. These are simple principles like the law of non-contradiction. Through introspection a person can determine whether one holds contradictory beliefs, such as when one applies one principle in some situations, and a contradicting principle in other situations. Introspection is the only way that we reveal these internal contradictions to ourselves. Then we proceed with faith in the law of non-contradiction, to rectify the internal contradiction, which can be called an instance of self-deception.
Quoting fdrake
Not necessarily, introspection is very important to truth as honesty, which is what I've been arguing. Introspection is the means by which we determine consistency and inconsistency within our own beliefs. We must continuously apply principles of logic to the beliefs which we have developed over the years, to compare old beliefs with new beliefs, and rid ourselves of inconsistency.
This is also the means by which we determine potential deception from others. We have to compare what the person has said in the past, with what the person is saying now. However, unless we search for written material, we only have our own minds (memory), as the means to access what the person has said in the past. So the process whereby we apply logic to determine inconsistency in others is simply a form of introspection, except we must necessarily distinguish the beliefs of another from one's own beliefs.
Jesus said "I am Son of man". Others said "he is Son of God". To claim "I am Son of God" was blasphemy, a punishable offence. The Jews wanted Pilate to judge Jesus as guilty of that offence, and apply punishment. Jesus said I am here to witness the truth. Pilate said what is truth. Then Pilate said he found no basis for a charge against Jesus, expressing his honest opinion, and turned Jesus over to the Jews, washing his hands of the matter. The Jews afflicted punishment.
I'm going to be real and say I have no idea what kind of entity the mind is. Is it even an entity at all? We have brains, sure. But the mind isn't something I feel confident in saying I know what the entity is. The mind is not exactly like ducks, as in your example. There's no method attached to resolving disputes about it, whereas with ducks you have "go take a look" -- and indeed if you saw black ducks you'd be justified in responding "the ducks are black", or in re-interpreting your partner as meaning the ducks are black. That is, the method could break down, depending upon the parties involved.
For now I'm just expressing discomfort, at least, with the notion of a modular memory akin to a hard drive or a book case -- which I believe is leading to support the notion of the correspondence theory of truth, something I've been arguing against.
Would you feel the same, or naw?
It's that last bit that's the most important to my general approach.
(as for whether I'm a realist or anti-realist, I find myself flipping back and forth on that all the time. I just try not to pre-figure the answer, given that's a normal point of dispute. i.e. it's thought-terminating, given there being no method for determining what one ought to believe there)
I understand that, but why would mere observations even need to cohere? There's no less a gap between, say, my experience of time passing and the actual time passing. The former we might discuss as you are here, the latter we measure with a clock. But there's be no purpose to trying to resolve the difference between a day that I thought dragged on a bit and a day that you thought went by in a flash. You and I can experience different, observational accounts of how quickly time seemed to pass. talking about then would be nothing more than curation ("Oh, that's interesting"), there's be no purpose, nor logic behind reconciling the two accounts, the actual amount of time that passed was measured by the clock and that's our only shared account.
So whilst I completely agree about the gap between phenomena and recorded mental events, I can't see that it explains the analysis of phenomena as if it were amenable to rational argument. Is there a reason your lived experience ought to cohere rationally with Srap's and Moliere's? Is it a puzzle to be resolved if it doesn't?
Quoting fdrake
Yes.
If I were to wonder about how a car worked, my first port of call would be Wikipedia. I wouldn't speculate about how I thought a car might work and then compare notes with others similarly speculating. A car (and its workings) are just not that kind of thing.
Likewise with society. A little more complicated, but if I really was wondering if society worked partly through norms of conduct, I'd hop straight onto Wikipedia and look up what people who'd had a chance to really dig into societies have found. Again, like the car, I believe 'societies' are just that kind of entity. The sort that there are facts of the matter about and those facts amenable to investigation.
So with something like...
Quoting fdrake
Seems to me, like the car, like 'societies', to be best answered by hopping on to Wikipedia and seeing if anyone has checked. I mean, it's quite a simple experiment, we have markers of behavioural preparation, markers of conceptual imaging, we even (with a little trial and error) could probably find the 'e key' neuron (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_cell)! Then we'd know if you do or don't use your mental map of where the e key is every time, or not.
If we're talking about your experience of what it feels like to seek the e key, then that's not amenable to hopping on to Wikipedia. But then it's not amenable to gradual correction by rational enquiry either.
Ooooo....you sneaky devil, you. I see what you did right there. Everyone has his own presuppositions, and your chosen field of expertise aims to reduce them all to something by which they are all explained.
Even if you’re right, and all presuppositions can be explained, we’re still left with the “horse....water” conundrum. Which is fine, we’re already in one anyway, presented by reason itself.
Same as it ever was.....
Uh huh. The question was why associating the meaning of the word 'truth' with a pragmatic concept of utility caused this increase in deception. What difference does the meaning of the word make. Are people more able to deceive you because they can use the word 'truth' to describe their most pragmatic models. If we banned them from using the word that way, would they somehow be shackled in their deception?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How?
...seems at odds with...
Quoting Moliere
Is it that you are a little sure of what kind of entity the mind is? Something in the ballpark of the sort of thing unlike ducks, but perhaps no more specific than that?
Quoting Moliere
I would, but I'm more interested in why you feel that discomfort. Is it, like @fdrake, that it's not how it feels to you? If so, then why would you be uncomfortable with other people describing it that way. Is there something pushing you to think that we ought not have differences in how we feel our mind works (or our brain, if you want a more concrete entity). If we're talking about how the memory actually, works, then we'd need a textbook summarising the hundreds of experiments which have sought to discover just that. If, on the other hand, we're talking about how it seems to us our memories work, then would we expect any coherence? Is there some reason we'd be uncomfortable with completely inconsistent models?
I'm saying I don't even know if the mind is an entity. Whether the mind is a real thing or not isn't determined by myself.
Quoting Isaac
I'd say that the reason for the discomfort isn't so thorough or rationalistic as what you're proposing. I've read some books -- indeed, I've even browsed Wikipedia on my time on the internets :D -- and gone through some classes. I've talked with some people who I respect and follow their lead.
I trust others. It's not a belief derived from rationalistic impulses to prove myself the one who knew about the mind.
Hence the importance of my approach. If you agree with me, then that's enough. After all, you know more about the studies on memory, right? So in our little discussion group, if others see that as relevant, then we could move forward with that belief regardless of its truth-value.
Aren't I just.
Quoting Mww
There's more to an explanation than a kind of sub-level of more foundational grounds.
I agree with your complaint about reducing presuppositions, and would rebuke any colleagues in my field to no less a degree than you are here.
But, as I say, more foundational grounds doesn't exhaust the sort of thing an 'explanation' might be.
"It just feels that way" is such an answer, for example.
"Where's Tim?" "Dunno. Wait --- he said he was going over to Josh's."
Did I switch from knowing Tim was going to Josh's, maybe for a few hours, to not knowing for a moment or two, and then to knowing it again? I don't think so.
Knowledge you have no access to whatsoever sounds sketchy, I agree, but according to the movies there's hypnosis and therapy. Not the most important case. Knowledge you have imperfect access to is so common, the examples pile up easily. Keeping a grocery list in your head, you might easily recall all but one of the items you intended to buy, and you have to really think to get the last. Again, I can't see describing that as knowing, then not knowing, and then knowing again. You know the whole time, but have trouble remembering, simple as that. And we do, a great deal of the time, readily recall what we know, as needed.
For real arguments against the requirement that to know you must also know you know, see Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits (which I've only just started reading).
Okay, now, that's an appalling mischaracterization of what's going on here.
I'm responsible for this current round of the discussion going in the direction it has, and from the beginning I left open the possibility that the explanation for "Pat's house is white" counting as true is just that this is what people by and large say, that there is an implicit convention, no more. "Just look" was offered, by @Banno if memory serves, as another thing people do that has bearing on the question. It hasn't been accepted as some official argument settler, certainly not by me. I have in fact tried to bring the discussion right up to the point where there is such direct disagreement over a purported fact, and I have been reluctant to describe this simplistically as one person saying something true and the other false. I have tried to be scrupulous about this, while still pushing the conversation toward such questions being unavoidable. (If you've given 1000 4-year-olds the wug test, how many of them answered "wugs"? Don't know? Why not? Oh yeah -- the only way to know is to actually go and look at the data.)
I have also described the process of model building as beginning with collecting some data, going and checking the layout of Pat's neighborhood, but only because I don't know how else model building might be done. I have noted that the procedures I described do not guarantee fidelity in the model, and that this could matter when it is put to use. I tried to lay this all out in just enough detail that anyone could find something to criticize. I've been trying not to hide my assumptions, but point them out, even where I can find no option but to rely on them. We are capable of collecting data aren't we? Or should we quit bothering since it's all enactively constructed anyway...
Quoting Isaac
Gee, this sounds rather like the scenario I was asking for input about. And you seem to be providing some sort of account here, of roughly the sort I asked for. And you know all this how exactly? Have you done research to determine whether this is so? Did you check wikipedia? Or did you sit in your armchair and reason your way to these conclusions?
Usually, conventionally, yes, but does not remain that case, in which an explanation serves as a proof? Granted, a highly restricted explanatory domain, to be sure, but can’t it be said that proofs are explanations given from the most foundational ground relative to that which is explained?
Quoting Isaac
.....to which I would argue that “it just feels that way”, while indeed a foundational ground and may be an answer, it is difficult to suppose as an explanation. Here I would agree that there is more to an explanation than this kind of foundational ground.
We can leave it here, if you like. You’ve got a lot of answering to do otherwise, so...thanks for taking the time.
This is interesting, and getting closer to our disagreement. I think I could go along with this and your grocery list example with the understanding that the "objects" (the list, the propositions, the beliefs) can change when we're not authoring them, and we are free from following them when they are cued (but generally it's habit which forces us to continue using the script -- it's just easier than to continually scrutinize every belief I might have).
Yes, I'd say I think that we still know that Tim was going to Josh, and we know our list. Our immediate expressions or experiences of ourselves aren't the arbiter of our habits. Perhaps, depending upon how we want to construe belief, we could say that we stopped believing Tim was going to Josh's because we couldn't remember, but upon remembering (recalling the script, the line, due to whatever it is that made us believe that) we do believe that -- while we knew it the entire time (there has to be some way we have a memory, after all -- I don't want to deny memory, only modify the picture we're using a bit).
I think that with our respective metaphors, the thing I'd modify in using yours is that there are Gremlins in our library of knowledge which rewrite our scripts from time to time when we're not looking, or burn them, or whatever it is that makes them change. Also, I'd say there's some kind of veil involved -- we don't always immediately know what we know, we aren't transparent to ourselves. We have to figure it out along the way (and re-figure it out along the way). And, for some of us, the Gremlins do more than rewrite or blot out scripts -- some of them rebuild the entire house that is our metaphor for our mind.
***
Another way to think of this -- I have a handful of books that I've read more than once. They are the sort of books which retain their value regardless of my current circumstances. When I read them it's as if there's more or something else there than was there the first time about, though the strings certainly haven't changed. It's like every reading is itself a writing, is how I've explained that before. Though perhaps we could say that the words simply faded and I'm putting the words back into my box of propositions I call "the world" or "the book", a copy of the book. (going back to Galileo's metaphor for the mind here :D )
I'm not sure if this is all making sense or not -- it seems to me that the one thing I'd find difficult to let go of, in our conversation, is that our memories, our beliefs, morph or dissipate. And that our environments change so much that we really do have to be able to let go of beliefs, even if there are a handful of beliefs we repeat to ourselves and keep.
So, at least, we agree with these sorts of phenomena. Our general pictures we're using wouldn't count against one another here, I don't think. Let's see if what I've laid out above helps or hurts chances of understanding between ourselves.
Quoting Moliere
I see. So you might say "that's not how memory works" and some of that discomfort is because what's being proposed doesn't cohere with what you've learned from the people you trust. That makes sense (if I've understood it right?)
Quoting Moliere
I'm not an expert on memory, so don't trust me over your other trusted sources. Like most academics I know my specialism and any matters which touch it and then I'm probably about 30 years behind in anything else! But yes, as far as my understanding goes, memories are not stored like data files, they're more like rehearsals for some behaviour that might be required later. We might experience 'searching' for where I put my keys, but in the brain it's more like rehearsing doing so again. There's not a 'fact' of where I put my keys encoded somewhere which we retrieve.
Quoting Moliere
That's very similar to the way I feel about it. I can't see any reason why our folk understandings of how our minds work would be consistent, I can even think of a reason why they ought to be.
You said...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
...and also...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
None of which is to contradict the fact that my representation is a mischaracterisation (only you can know that), but it is to contradict the idea that it's 'appalling'. I've almost directly quoted you with the 'just look' aspect and you've at the very least been pointing in the direction of knowledge being obtainable via our empirical investigations.
Moving on though...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You were given just such an option with...
Quoting Joshs
...that models are anticipatory, not recollective. That models predict and enact those predictions, not collect and curate passive data. You've rejected that approach. You're not obliged to follow it, of course, but you can't play the card of "I don't know where this might go, just laying out some questions" at the same time as dismissing some of those answers out of the box.
If you want to build a model of the way model-building works (with regards to the role of language) but you want to do so only from a particular set of presuppositions, then I think it's not an unreasonable question for someone to ask "why those ones?" - which is all I'm doing here.
Assuming you are still baffled and this isn't a rhetorical gesture. A common reference point would probably be the idea that perceptions are cognitive endeavours, are linguistically mediated in a delayed fashion, and are definitely theory ladened. So's the more general (though perhaps physiologically derivative) category of interpretation. Being able to puzzle out commitments and background assumptions is what, I believe, this kind of discussion is particularly good at. Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe you are promoting a discussion of the same character by trying to tease out the other discussants background assumptions while holding what they (we) believe as an object of (noncommital) scrutiny. By the looks of it, it's the same device.
If it's genuine bafflement, and not a rhetorical strategy, I don't think I can help you understand the discussion more than that.
Bingo!
I mean, sure, introspection is a part of my thinking (in the sense that we probably can't help but to introspect when thinking about the mind), but I agree that introspection is notoriously faulty in determining the truth about ourselves, and especially faulty in determining any general feature about the mind rather than some specific feature of my mind. And, yes, the discomfort is one of not-cohering with what I've gleaned about how the mind works so far. But I don't have a deep rational argument for these things as much as I'm sharing impressions and looking for where we disagree with the eventual hope of building conceptual bridges.
After all, since we're not experts, what even is the level of description? It's big-picture, it's folk, and it's impressionistic even as we think on and reference properly scientific descriptions -- even if you are a cognitive scientist, the audience (including myself, I'm a chemist) of our conversation makes it so that this isn't a scientific conversation since we all have such a wide array of backgrounds, and we're not united in some institution trying to generate knowledge. That's just the sort of conceptual muck that philosophy is perfectly suited for untangling (or, at least, demonstrating an inability to untangle).
Quoting Isaac
Cool.
To get us back on track to truth --
While belief falls into that quagmire, I think small-t truth escapes it, where big-T truth doesn't -- and I've been attempting, at least, to reduce substantive theories of truth to big-T stories about truth: a kind of Fictionalism about substantive theories of truth, while maintaining the truth-aptness of utterances.
Given that we're in the wild-wild west of concepts, small-t truth and some charity might be the only thing holding our conversation together, especially when it comes to something as amorphous and difficult to describe as the mind, in general.
I don't doubt that, but there's categories and approaches.
You'd find it weird if we all, as car drivers, tried to puzzle out our commitments and background assumptions about our folk theories regarding how cars work, no? We could. I suspect most drivers, even those unfamiliar with the mechanics, have some kind of intuition, if pushed, about what exactly the gearstick does, how the engine works...and all of those things would have background assumptions and would entail commitments. They certainly all have an 'experience' of pushing the pedal, feeling the car respond, etc. But a discussion about it would be super weird. If we want to know how cars work we just consult our Haynes manuals. We still have those folk theories, but we don't expect fruit from a discussion of them, beyond simple curation of how people feel.
At the other end of the scale, if we were discussing the ethics of abortion, it's all commitments and assumptions. There's nothing but folk theories. We'd have to expect fruit from a discussion of that nature because we haven't found any equivalent of "just look" to discover something non-folk.
Many things fall somewhere in between, but still on the scale. So I don't think it's ever sufficient to say "you carry out this kind of investigation with X so it must be understandable that others do with Y".
There remains the question of why the participants have treated it as 'abortion-style' investigation, as opposed to a 'car-style' investigation - which is all I was asking.
I think this is very perceptive, observations, introspection on experience, scientific data and what makes sense to believe is common knowledge seem quite like tent pins for the discussion here. We've got all these concepts flying about in the wind, and very little fixity to them. Attributing these commonalities small t-truth seems a necessary part of progression; like you can't sensibly doubt your instrument at the same time as calibrating something to its output.
I think that is also something quite close to Davidson's thesis of 'radical interpretation'. [hide="Lengthy SEP quote about it"]. I also think that your methodological challenge gets at something fundamental to the discussion @Isaac; what do you do when you know all the tools are biased through what context they ascribe the information, and even what entities are in play in the discussion bring their own theory-ladened framing devices? You try and explore the landscape and learn to find your way about.
[/hide]
I don't think it fits neatly into either. You can't do an experiment to see what interpretive frame is appropriate for a task. There's no manual for resolving differences of this sort. I think all you can hope for is that there's some reference to small t truths where appropriate, when you're trying to jostle worldviews about.
There's also probably a relevant side discussion we could have about how it can be possible that I'm in a house when in some sense the house is made mostly of the void between atom parts, but it's another of those side discussions. I tried to allude to this with the scientific vs manifest image reference; if all we're doing is exposing hooks in the manifest image (folk theory, how discourse structures thought about stuff) for better theory, among the discussants, and learning our way about the shared space of concepts, that's good enough for me.
Cool. I think that's the only sensible way to go here. a lack of rational argument is good. I don't think this sort of thing is particularly amenable to rational argument. It's more, for me, about the ways in which what we know constrains further folk-theories, than any idea that we can derive then from what we know. In that sense, I like your notion that some concept of how the memory actually works, constrains the range of folk-theories sufficiently to make you a little leery of those which treat it as a bookshelf. "A little leery" is about as far as the justification from neuroscience takes us.
Quoting Moliere
Yeah, I can see that, but therein would have to lie some early commitments to the sort of data those sciences can give us laymen, no? We can, for example, take data from neuroscience as constraining, or we can commit ourselves to a notion that minds are unconstrained by brains. We can (as I offered earlier) say that something like Psychology produces constraints on our folk-theories of how our minds work by offering us a much wider sample size than we could ever glean ourselves, or we could reject that constraint by saying that all minds are different and so the averaging of Psychology is always only an artefact.
The point is that these commitments recede our lay understanding of the science and also precede our decisions about the form of any investigation (including things like the utility of rational methods, the value of introspection etc).
Quoting Moliere
You'll have to just lay out the difference between the two, I'm not sure I'd be using the same distinction as you.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, you're quoting me, but since you don't understand the context of anything I say, what's the point?
The whole point of this exercise was to provide a way of making the differences in approaches precise enough and explicit enough that we could actually discuss those differences, instead of going round and round on the same crap. To get there, I say things that may not represent my position, but are more like bringing out a position that the setup I did, shows is a possible position. The intent, again, was just to be clear enough that problems would be clear or could be made clear. @Banno's not onboard with much that I've said but that's fine; as I told him, if my model has assumptions that suck, we should get to see exactly where and how it fails. That would be a win, in my book.
The same goes for the setup. Tried to make it just explicit enough to criticize. But I have to say something, so I did the best I could to get things started.
I don't think of philosophical discussion as a contest of wills. YMMV.
Quoting Isaac
Not really.
That's all very 30,000-feet for my purposes. In this context, that's just a lot of handwaving. Show me exactly what that looks like, if not in my toy model then in another. I offered @Joshs the same invitation. (Maybe he answered and I missed it; I'll look again.)
Or don't. If you'd rather argue about whether something is anticipatory or recollective, have at it. Not what I'm after.
Absolutely. That, and abandon any sense of the 'throw everything in a bucket' type of empiricism that seems at times to be popular among the lay philosophy community. abandon the idea that we can derive the 'true' model by gathering all the data together and having a 'really good look at it'. The data is already theory-laden, as is the gathering bucket and the act of looking.
As for us talking about what we find in the bucket... Well...it's hard to see we have a hope in hell.
A good idea in principle, but (and we all knew this would come) the idea of 'charity' here itself just acts as box in which to hide all the assumptions which are going to filter the kinds of answers we're going accept. Imagine we pick any two posts here, on this thread, and solicit from the poster and the responder a view about whether the response exhibited this charity. Now heaven forfend that I would bias a potential experiment with a prediction, but in lieu of the actual work, I'd bet my hat the posters would more often than not feel their critics had not exhibited such charity whilst the critics would, more often than not feel they had. Would there be any way to adjudicate? Would there heck.
Isn't it great? :D
To be even more pedantic, we all seem fine with some true sentences, and even agree upon some of which of those sentences count as true. We just disagree on what we mean when we agree that they're true! :D Or something like that.
That's the spirit!
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
See above ^. Did you read my mind? I'd not finished writing my post about how the critiqued are always going to assume a lack of charity from the critics more than vice versa, and here you supply just such an example. Do I not understand the context, or do you fail to specify it sufficiently? Do those professing an understanding have just that, or are they just more willing than I am to offer that 'charity', assume that your implied context is, in fact, the coherent context they think it is, and not the opaque one I get from reading what you've written?
Is there a pattern here, do we randomly assign charity or not, do I misunderstand you and you fail to see the relevance of my posts by chance? Or does the known antagonism between our respective world views bias that sense.
It's been something I've been thinking about a lot recently. How philosophy, particularly, simply cannot proceed discursively without this charity. It's hard enough to interpret a clear instruction from a mechanic or engineer. Even these are sometimes taken wrongly. So how far could we ever hope to get expressing the vaguest of notions such as philosophy without interlocutors who are prepared to come along with us?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. An my point was the way such a setup is already so massively theory-laden as to act to dismiss several possible answers right of the bat. It's an act of clarity by virtue only of the fact that where you see mud, others see the makings of pottery. even to lay things out thus is to render some matters not as problems, but as incoherent within the framework, like choosing a coding language and then asking for people to debug your code. "You should have used Ruby" ceases to become a coherent answer.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Exactly. Set the context such that some positions become 30,000-feet handwaiving. Was it an accident that the positions thus rendered irrelevant were the one's you'd earlier found yourself mired in? Of course not. You clarify the terms of engagement to filter out the answers you're uncomfortable with. We all do it, it's not just you. But the reasons for your discomfort interest me. The reasons for mine, unfortunately, elude me.
Thanks :). I'm glad to hear so. I'm not sure how to proceed without sentences that are true (or are truth-apt, at least). I'm fine with not specifying what that means (or, as I see the T-sentence, allowing the utterances we're considering to define the meaning of truth rather than having a big-picture theory of truth), but at least they should be capable of being true or false regardless of the picture we use in understanding truth, and we seem to be quite capable of using true sentences even while having no clear understanding of truth itself.
I think this is fine, probably. Maybe we could fill in some details even here, but maybe it's unnecessary. This is close to what I took@fdrake to be saying, that knowledge might have some mechanism that allows recreation of the belief on demand, more or less.
I do want to add that it was not my intention to contest the neuroscience of memory, or the idea that memories are, to some degree, confabulations, recreations, and so on. I assume the research on that is sound, and I think it accords readily with experiences most of us have had. It's the extent of the finding, rather than the finding itself, that might be a little surprising, but there you go. It is what it is.
That does make knowledge -- as distinct from memory -- a little tricky, because knowledge is obviously persistent in some sense, even if that sense is transformed into "presenting consistently" or something. It's not like we only just discovered that we can misremember things we know, so there's reason to think the concept of knowledge ought to be able to survive our improved understanding of memory.
I really had no idea we would end up so focused on memory. Honestly hadn't occurred to me that memory would be taken as a sort of proxy for the persistence of knowledge. So this is really interesting.
On the other hand, I did note along the way that one reason for making a model, like a map, is to improve access to the knowledge you've acquired. You noted something similar in the institutional memory of the sciences and academia at large.
This might also be the place to say that I wondered if my toy model would end up functioning in the Republic’s man-writ-large way. (I didn't explicitly design it for that, but not so that it couldn't be either.)
As I described things, we might make a model in language precisely to improve access to our knowledge, but now it looks like access to the model might be hampered by the very same problem it was designed (hypothetically) to solve: namely, that access to the model is in some sense inherently unreliable because memory, including memory of the model, is unreliable.
That's very nice. It looks like it really undermines the motivation for such linguistic models. As I said, I had no idea we might be headed here, but this is the sort of result I hoped for. (Though I expected it to be less general: if you can't remember what color Pat's house, you can't remember what color your model says it is -- something like that.)
But what if this wrong because overbroad, mainly. Maybe the point of a model is precisely that it involves a type of access that is more reliable? For instance, there's that early work of Herbert Simon and others on the memories of chess players: shown a position with pieces randomly placed, strong players (masters) do no better than anyone else at reconstructing them; shown a position from a real game, they do dramatically better because they break down the position into meaningful chunks and assemble those. The random position is harder to model efficiently, and the position modeling that masters do seems to enhance access (masters remember many, many patterns, and use them in modeling a given position). So the argument might fail if this is another point of modeling, to enhance access and make it more reliable. Both cases of memory, but not the same kind.
Chess masters know a lot, standard development patterns, openings, endgame techniques, middlegame themes, on and on and on. I just can't imagine "giving up" the entire category of knowledge. I don't know how we could understand chess performance without it.
Fair. I think I added to the confusion by stating my terms so starkly. As @Isaac noted:
Quoting Isaac
I'm good enough with "A little leery" -- consider my thought amended from refusal to accept a bookshelf to being leery and wanting to modify that picture a bit. On the other side of what I'm saying, we do frequently recall things just fine. It's not some titanic struggle at all times. We know things, as persons, not only as institutions.
So where you say
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree here. I've fallen into the philosopher's trap of overgeneralizing to take care of a conceptual bump. There is institutional knowledge, which I think fits the notion of correspondence, but then there's what we actually do and what we learn when learning how to do, which I'm less inclined to believe fits correspondence, but which I don't want to deny either.
So I don't think I could entirely get rid of the category of knowledge as applied to persons, now that you mention that as a possible consequence of my own thoughts. That's definitely worth avoiding if we can.
But, to go for the Hail Mary of all Hail Mary's, in order to spell out an understanding of said knowledge I bet we'd need our sentences to be able to be true. :D
The ethical concerns regarding proper treatment of others in discourse aside, I spelled out a similar distaste for the idea to @Banno earlier in the thread. I think the author's onto something, but I think it's an insufficiently procedural description to actually get at how people can triangulate to a common understanding, or at least refine an area of disagreement, through reference to shared phenomena (interpreted under theory ladened aspect and spoken about in a theory ladened language with different emphasis on terms between people). I don't generally like this argument pattern, but I will use it here; it'd be a bloody miracle that any sort of triangulation could happen at all if there wasn't something "truthy" or representative about semantic content, and of necessity that has to be sufficiently shareable to count as such.
This is probably another thread to pull on separate from the more concrete analysis Srap and Moliere are doing. How many layers of metaphilosophy are we on now?
Quoting Moliere
Another spitball from the side, maybe memory is a central concept because it taps into a bodily process which imbues agents with repeatable dispositions toward things. There's a resonance with an analysis of belief which treats it as a "tendency to act as if" (@Isaac), which (very broad strokes) is a pragmatic stance on the connection between what is expressed and what the expression concerns. If you want to know what is expressed, look at the behavioural commitments it imbues in someone.
Whether someone needs to actually do a behavioural (including cognitive) commitment of a belief to count as believing that belief (eg, whether the tendency to act as if ever actually needs to be enacted...) seems a different issue; and maybe there's where statements, as a model, come into it. It's a very clear cut case that someone will believe something if they are willing to assert it.
But, and this is a big but, the focus on belief has a solipsistic connotation I feel in this context. The majority of our beliefs tend to be approximately correct, and in that regard somehow count as knowledge of the real world.
In that regard two more definite paths have been fleshed out here, I think, one is the broadly idealist (transcendetal though) Kantian move @Isaac makes where it's beliefs all the way down and modelling reality is the same thing as putting a filter on it; everything we know and experience lives on "our side" of the filter. The other is a mirror image; Davidson's actually quite similar to this, only the filter is ever expanding and has a tendency toward monopoly over all expression and interpretation (@Banno), which means there's no point of talking about the other side of the filter, so what's the point in even having a filter as an object? I believe the former finds a lack of access to un-modelled reality a necessary consequence of the existence of a filter due to how interpretation works. The latter finds direct access to modelled reality a necessary consequence of the mutuality of the filter, and thus finds no better account of the filter than the variations of a shared environment. Despite being very opposite positions, both can make the move that any other position is speaking about things which are unintelligible, due to placing different conditions for the possibility of interpretation on the filter!
To my reckoning, neither account treats knowledge as a "first class mental state", it's derivative of belief. Perhaps some way forward would be to place accuracy, truth, correctness and so on in whatever process generates belief as a mediating factor. For example recognising a falsehood (you then know not-X is true), or learning you are able to pick up something you could not. Neither of those things speak about knowledge being something which lasts, however.
I suppose it could be said that the body knows constantly in those kinds of cases, and the knowing being conscious comes and goes. That would be one kind of way to characterize knowing that you know. So, then whether one would be said to know or not during the times when access to the information is not operative would become merely a matter of definition of the term 'know' and one's preference as to which definition to adopt.
Cheers for the Williamson book recommendation; I'll take a look if I can find the time.
Probably so. Honestly, it's like no one is convinced there's any such thing anymore.
For what it's worth, I wasn't thinking about knowledge when I started up my little model; I thought it was going to be more behavioral -- people, things, sentences, but I had been thinking about knowledge a lot, so what seemed natural to me eventually turned out to be more stuff about knowledge.
I'd love to see a similar sort of toy model that's beliefs all the way down, and doesn't include knowledge anywhere. What does that look like?
Quoting Luke
If the argument is that models don't work, then we have agreement.
Which of these is the “no models” view?
But seeing as how you have taken an interest here again, I'll throw in a quick link back to some of our other conversations.
It seems to me that the models being discussed here are not the models being discussed when talking about neural networks.
Specifically, the models here are symbolic, while the models of neural networks aren't.
Now I think that you will pretty much agree, and agree that the discussion that should be taking place is how symbolic representations emerge from neural networks.
But this is not understood by others, and without that common ground the conversation moves to accusations of insincerity.
My own approach is that truth belongs in the domain of intentional behaviour, of beliefs and attitudes, and has no direct analogue in the neural world, onto which it can be mapped. Something along the lines of Davidson's anomalism of the mental.
The theme that the same thing can have more than one description has arisen already in this thread, in the muddled attitude folk adopt to deciding if the kettle boiling is a fact or a sentence. The answer is "yes".
But the considerations are minute, and the circumstances for their consideration here not ideal.
Anyway...
The latter, there's no model in the sense that there's no mediation of contact between word and world via a "conceptual scheme", which is a system of organising experience that is specific to an individual and not parsable in terms of anything communal. I don't think people mean the same thing by "model" in this thread!
Despite the fact that you say:
Quoting fdrake
?
If you mean, why do I think knowledge is, at least relatively, persistent --- I'm not quite sure what to say. I could say (a) it's part of our concept of knowledge for it to be persistent (not my favorite argument) or (b) there's an embarrassment of evidence that knowledge persists, for varying durations, certainly, but it's not ephemeral like perception; and maybe (a) derives from (b).
Are you a citizen only when you're showing your passport? Do you know how to ride a bike only while you're actually on a bike? Do you know your mother's name only when you're using it in a sentence?
In the example I gave -- which of course isn't quite knowledge of where Tim is but knowledge of where he said he was going -- I came to know what he said when I heard him say it; it's least committal I guess to say that I then inferred his intentions, and made further inferences about where he'd be later, and so on. Then I forget. Then I remember. For the latter, I would have to learn what Tim said from my memory of what he said, in order for me to create a new instance of knowing what he said.
Okay, that's interesting, and we could talk about how remembering and hearing in the first place might be compromised in similar or different ways, both episodes being theory-laden, both to some degree confabulations, whatever you'd like to say there.
Except, remember that by stipulation I don't know what he said, so what am I remembering? If I recreate his words from something, what is that something? I don't mean that as question for neuroscientists; it can obviously be that too, but for us, it needs to be something that's capable of engendering knowledge. That's the whole point of this, to say that there are these separate instances of knowledge and I create a new one when I need it. How do I do that?
Quoting Isaac
I'm not seeing that.
Quoting Isaac
What I have in mind is more that the house is a construct of our interaction.
My objection is to the theory that we each have a private, intentional model of the house, which we set out in words and then verbalise. That objection is the common one found in Wittgenstein's private language argument (@Sam26).
This is not to say that we do not have a model of the house in terms of some weighting of neural patterns. Perhaps we do; while a very interesting issue in its own right, that is secondary in this context.
I think Davidson's argument against conceptual schema is in line with the private language argument. After all if there are no private languages there are also no private models.
But a better way of expressing this is to say that there are no models at all, just the publicly constructed world in which our forms of life occur.
All of which should not suggest that we cannot publicly construct models. We do so, in some of the language games within our form of life.
And all of this appears to be at a symbolic level sitting somewhere on top of our various neural networks.
Searle goes a long way towards explaining how this comes about, using iterations of "X counts as Y in Z", in which social institutions are seen as language constructs.
There's an outline; there is much to discuss in the detail.
Yes. I appreciate that was badly written. There's a model in the sense that there are individual interpretations of a single in principle shareable reality, there aren't models in that account in the sense that models are needed to interface with the world.
I think it's a different sense of model from what Isaac meant, from what Banno's using, from that the RHS of the T-sentence is, from the sense that Srap's comments feature a toy model and so on. There are a lot of model words with different meanings flying around the thread.
I think the continued use of a visual example is misleading. It unwittingly authorises the myth of subjective interpretation.
I chose the alternate example, whether the fence is wood or brick, as better suited to the task in hand; it's more obviously not just a question of opinion.
It's easy to say that the door's being white or green is a question of mere opinion; but harder to do that with the fence.
I suggest re-working your examples with fences instead of colours, to see how it makes a difference.
My suspicion is that @Janus, and @Luke, see knowledge as a private construct. I commend adopting a strategy that shows the public nature of justification.
The temptation will be for folk to confuse justification with truth, again. There's a good chance of the thread going off in another circle.
There's a story that the Columbia Pictures was going to hype up the release of a sequel to Groundhog Day, then just present the original, again.
So it goes.
What you’ve presented as Davidson’s view above strikes me as our shared language being the model of reality. I thought that was why you intentionally referred to a “modelled reality”, rather than it being poorly expressed. I still would not consider this as a “no models” view. There remains a reality independent of our linguistic “model” which could resist and not conform to our model in some ways.
I don't share your allergy to all things mental.
The Revision theory, discussed in some other posts, appears to offer a way to map out the circularity of the T-sentence definition of Truth. Rather than reject notions of truth as circular, Hans Herzberger and Anil Gupta develop formal methods of dealing with circularity that show where it becomes pathological, and where it doesn't. So the Liar is found to be pathological, while the T-sentence is consistent.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545102?seq=1
@Michael - you may find this interesting.
When one opposes a view that is ubiquitous, it can appear that one is taking an extreme view.
I don't oppose the mental. I just do not suppose it to be confined to the inside of people's heads.
What use is a justification that is private? A private justification, like a private rule, becomes mere habit.
I agree, if there wasn't some outward manifestation of the mental, then what would a mental life entail? Even if we exclude language, what's mental would have to seep out in some outward act (linguistic or otherwise). The mental, in order for us to call it mental, has to manifest itself in some way. We could say the same thing for what it means for something to be conscious.
Thought you might.
What do you think of the link, if any, to Davidson's rejection of conceptual schema? Davidson's strategy seems to me to be showing that conceptual schema, if they exist, must be private; but that leads to their being incoherent, unintelligible. Hence, he rejects the notion.
I like that -- especially the word "opinion" there -- but I doubt I'll continue. Far as I can tell, people were only ((or at least mostly)) reading what I wrote to see what conclusion I reached so they could agree or disagree with it. I mean, sure, philosophy traffics in abstractions, but I really hoped I could engage people at the level of a concrete scenario we could look at closely together. But I seem to be the only one interested in such a procedure.
Oh really? You should be more clear with your questions, I didn't get that out of it at all. The point was that associating "truth" with utility renders truth as the means to the end. The end is what is wanted, the goal. Therefore truth becomes whatever it is which successfully gets a person what is wanted. Often, deception successfully gets one what is wanted. Therefore deception may be truth.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, that sums it up nicely. First, we are taught that truthfulness is a good and honourable thing. But, if from childhood, we also learn that "truth" is used in the pragmatic way, such that truth is the means for achieving one's goals, then the means to the end are always good and honourable, and there are no bad, or dishonourable means. We will then go about our lives deceiving people, believing that we are being truthful, good and honourable people, telling the truth, because we honestly believe that this is what "truth" is. We were taught that this is what truth is. And a person who honestly believes that what they are doing is right, is much more difficult to rehabilitate, and prevent from doing what they are doing, than one who believes that what they are doing is wrong, feels guilt, and wants rehabilitation. So, by giving people free reign to deceive without guilt, by using "truth" in this way, we enable them to deceive us.
Quoting Sam26
The mental manifests outwardly in many different ways, artefacts, bird's nests, beaver dams, etc.. However, the question as to whether the mental depends on an outward manifestation, for its very existence, is not so easily answered. That's the thorny issue. Experience shows me that the intent to act is prior to the act itself, therefore the mental is prior to its outward expression. So, the mental, if prior to its outward expression, cannot be dependent on the outward expression. And this is why the issue is thorny. Being independent from its outward expression, means that there is no necessary relationship between the mental and its outward manifestation. The outward manifestation therefore does not necessarily provide a reliable representation of the mental. That's the problem, and why dishonesty may be allowed to thrive.
Indeed. If one looks at groups which cohere and those which don't, a shared common goal is often cited as a feature of those that do. The obvious reason being that members then have to weigh up the cost of their dispute against the cost of the goal being frustrated and limit it only to that which seriously risks missing that goal. I think in philosophy there's simply too little at stake in terms of outcome (allowing any small perceived inconsistency to be exploited), but too much at stake in terms of personal narratives to want to give much leeway. These matters ('truth' perhaps being one of the biggest in this sense) are like the themes of the book we are the heroes in. They frame the plot and the characters and so can change a lot about our storylines in one go. But being our stories, there's no need to get it done which outweighs the need to get it just so. It's not like we're building a house.
There's way more politics in philosophy than anyone cares to admit.
Quoting fdrake
Ha! I make it at least six. If we get to ten we get a prize.
Quoting fdrake
I brought this up earlier. I think we need to consider the functionality of expressions more than their content. We can understand others even when they mess up their words, we almost know what they mean to say, and I think this is because their expressions have a purpose, which we can intuit from the circumstances. That all being just a set-up to say that asserting something is a behaviour. I think even deliberate mental acts can be construed as behaviours in some contexts. Imagine someone who believes in telepathy. How would they act on that belief? They'd really really concentrate on the message they want to send. Funny thing is though, I bet they'd scrunch their eyes up too. Even the telepathic it seems can't escape the behavioural nature of communication!
Quoting fdrake
...and also
I like this. I always think that @Banno and I are saying much the same thing but from a different perspective. The thing we agree on is the lack of anything Cartesian-theatre-like. We can either remove that by focussing on the the shared world and 'black-box' -ing the mechanisms, or we can do that by showing how the mechanisms fully encompass the variability people are tempted to explain by Cartesian-like moves such as 'viewing' models, or saying that all we ever 'see' are representations. I think the only difference is that in the former case, the hidden states which are modelled (neural models), simply drop out of the conversation, as being unnecessary. In the latter case, they are needed, but only as part of the meta-model of the mechanism.
Quoting fdrake
I think one of the problems with 'knowledge' is that is has no neural correlate, so it doesn't really have a place in the second model (the one which uses the whole mechanisms of perception and beliefs).
I don't have any trouble with a neural correlate for beliefs - "tendency to act as if", seems to work. If your neural network has a tendency to act as if X then we can say it has a belief that X. It's a bit of a bastardisation, but I think it's not too unfair to the proper meaning.
But 'knowledge' and 'truth'...? I think if I was forced to put it somewhere, I might distinguish declarative memory from other sorts and say that we could attach the term to those, but, to be honest, that's a cop out because the only reason that works is because declarative memory is the kind of thing we can declare, still thinking of the social function of the term. 'Truth' probably fits best as a kind of Peircean pragmatism, but I'm not really happy with that and would far rather say that it has no neural correlate at all.
So yeah, I have a hard time seeing knowledge, truth and correctness as having any role at all internally. I think they play social roles. We use the terms in social interactions to refer to verbal expressions of belief (of the neural sort), for various functions - mostly getting other people to do stuff they wouldn't otherwise do without the persuasive force of 'truth', or 'knowledge'.
I had a little think about your thoughts on knowledge, which I at first rejected, but on consideration there might be something to it.
When folk talk about knowledge in these fora they usually mean knowing that, and forget about knowing how. I've previously suggested that knowing that is one aspect of knowing how. That is, propositional knowledge is a type of procedural knowledge.
And procedural knowledge is just the capacity for certain behaviours.
SO there may be some scope for considering procedural knowledge as preceding or anterior to propositional knowledge, and hence truth.
Ah, maybe I'm mistaken then. It seems that you say on the one hand that we'd have no basis for our agreement that the models were both 'of the neighbourhood' without a shared model, and then say that because of this we actually do have a shared model. We could, could we not, simply proceed without having any justification? We don't have to have a shared model, just because without one we'd be unable to justify our agreement that the conflicting models are both 'of the neighbourhood. We could just agree they are anyway?
Quoting Banno
Ah! I should have read on. That makes much more sense to me. Still, I'll leave the above by way of explanation.
Quoting Banno
Yes. I think we (or maybe just I) need to start talking in terms of neural-models and social-models. The two are quite distinct. Neither are much like a model as in 'a model car'.
I see the social model as a set of agreements which constitute 'the world'. That this is a kettle, that is a table...and so on. In neural terms, we're agreeing on what it is we're neural-modelling.
We do so to minimise surprise, so we can have reliable expectations of how other people will behave. The link then between our neural models and our social model is that the latter is an attempt to maintain some intersocial reliability in our use of the former, but in doing this trick, we turn our neural models into a radically different type of thing. Not to mention the fact that I don't think we do any of this consciously...
It's simply advantageous if your neural-model of the kettle is the same as mine. Then we can make tea together. So I take your actions toward the kettle as information updating my priors about it (and vice versa). Again, all subconscious. Our language about kettles, I think, is just an efficient way of achieving the same task.
Quoting Banno
Yeah. So this idea of a private model would be the equivalent of creating the social-type model, but keeping it to yourself. Yet the only purpose of the social-type model is intersocial cooperation. So what would be the point? All one would be doing, I think, is taking a social model and playing 'what if...?' with it.
Quoting Isaac
This might need clarification. If I've understood, there need be no homomorphic similarity between the neural nets of two individuals. The point is not that the networks are similar, but that their output - in this case, the behaviour of dealing with kettles - meshes. And I'll use "meshes" rather than "is the same", since I'll boil the kettle and make the tea but you can be Mother.
And this fits in with the mention of knowledge, in my reply to @Srap Tasmaner, above. You and I both know how to ride a bike, but the proof of this has nothing to do with our having similar neural paths in our brains, and everything to do with not falling off. We also both know that eight is four time two, and again this is to do with our capacity to count eggs and buttons and to share pizza slices and not with our having the same patterns of firing neurones.
Which is not to say that there may not indeed be patterns in that firing. This is the "anomalous" bit in anomalous monism.
The interesting part of the work your compatriots are doing is determining the extent to which our neural patterns do match.
Yes, that's exactly it. My bad expression to blame for the lack of clarity there.
Quoting Banno
Yep, absolutely. Knowing things is a social game of comparisons in our shared world, we don't look into each other's brains to find out, not even by proxy, as you say, we might well find nothing whatsoever similar. Just to add even more grist to that mill. The bit of our brain that some might claim 'knows' how to ride a bike today might well not even be the same bit that 'knows' it tomorrow. Most neural nets have a lot of redundancy and carry out multiple functions. Hence my focus on behaviour, rather than concepts. I rather see concepts as post hoc. Something we use after the event to help us understand why that situation just lead to that behaviour. But that may be too behaviourist for most tastes.
Well there's our first mistake then. 'Honesty' is the good and honourable thing. 'Truthfulness' is a game used to convince people your beliefs are better than theirs. Often honourable, often not.
Music to mine ears. In the past I've gone further and argued that concepts are things we do, not mental furniture. The number 1 is not a thing so much as a pattern of behaviour. Same for democracy and even London.
Don't look to the meaning, look to the use.
Bit boring for everyone else when we agree though!
Quoting Banno
Yes, that works as far as my model (scientific model - going to start specifying from now on) of cognition goes. A concept might be recognised by the repeated pattern of behaviours. Like all the apples on the table are real, but the set {all the apples on the table} isn't an additional thing in the room. It's a façon de parler.
There are, interestingly, a lot of quite strong correlations between identifiable areas of the brain (even down to specific neurons) and certain concepts, but I still agree that it's not right to talk of them as somehow containing or representing those concepts because alone they don't cause anything we'd recognise as such. It's more that they're consistently involved in producing that behaviour. That makes them super useful for us studying that behaviour, but not particularly important when it comes to understanding the social psychology of it where the other bits of the brain involved are far more enlightening. Like "oh look, the language centres are lighting up every time he tries to solve this maths puzzle" is far more enlightening than "oh look, the 'democracy' neuron fires every time he thinks of democracy" which is almost just tautological once you've accepted the idea of such neurons.
What such 'grandmother neurons' might show is that we internally cluster several otherwise distinct behavioural patterns, but again, these clusters can only ever loosely correlate with public notions such as 'democracy' because a private concept makes no sense.
It still has to be explained how the T-sentence is a definition of truth.
1. "p" is foo iff p
(1) isn't a definition of "foo". (1) only states the condition under which "p" is foo. And so too with the T-sentence: prima facie it only states the condition under which "p" is true; it doesn't define "[is] true".
As I mentioned before, Tarski didn't think of the T-sentence as being a definition of truth, only as something that must be entailed by the definition of truth. You've responded several times by saying that it is later authors who have taken the T-sentence as being a definition, so perhaps you could present their arguments to that effect?
I would say we're looking for some q where "[is] true" means q, or where "'p' is true" means q.
There's the nub.
I'll refer you to the discussion of definitions in the article cited. From about p.242 it discusses exactly this.
You should be able to read it online for free. Might need to create an account.
It seems to be saying the same thing that I said:
Just as my example of "p" is foo iff p defines the conditions under which a sentence is foo. But the T-schema doesn't define "[is] true" and my F-schema doesn't define "[is] foo".
If we want a definition of truth (and not just a definition of truth conditions) we need some q where "[is] true" means q, or where "'p' is true" means q. Ramsey's redundancy theory is at least one attempt at this.
I don't see any sense in your proposal, to separate "honest" from "honourable" (considering the family resemblance), such that being honest might often not be an honourable thing. I suppose that since there is no logical necessity to these relations, there might be a few instances when being honest is not honourable, but I would not say "often not", as you did.
So I'll dismiss your reply as not a serious attempt to address the issue. In fact, I would classify it as a dishonest attempt. To characterize the problem I described, as a problem with associating "honest" with "honourable" (saying that being honest might not be the honourable thing), instead of facing that problem I described, to deal with it properly, is just a dishonest denial of the problem.
Do you know the type of dishonesty I'm talking about? If someone shows you a bad habit of yours, which has a bad effect in the work place for example, and you rationalize the bad effect as the result of someone else's actions rather than as the effect of your own bad habit, in an attempt to avoid addressing your own bad habit. That's the kind of dishonesty I'm talking about here. Instead of directly addressing the problem I described, you are trying to characterize it as the result of something else.
Quoting Isaac
This is exactly the type of correlation which I described as problematic. The existence of dishonesty demonstrates very conclusively that "the tendency to act as if X", cannot be correlated directly with "has a belief that X". And so, as I described in the following passage, the outward manifestation does not provide a dependable representation of the mental "belief'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Banno
This provides a good example of the disconnect between the outward manifestation, and the inner "mental". If we look at numerous people who know how to ride a bike, we really cannot make any conclusions about any particular "beliefs" which are involved with this activity. Each person learned under different circumstances, and so has different mental correlations involved.
Now, someone like Creative would state that a child will not touch a fire, so this behaviour demonstrates a certain "belief". But this is just a reflection of how we generalize similar behaviours. We observe human beings behaving in similar ways, so we posit a common "belief" which is responsible for such similar behaviour. But that's really just a naive over simplification. Each individual human being is particular, and unique, having learned one's "how to" under circumstances distinct from every other human being.
However, we see great benefit in conforming these particular circumstances of learning, creating institutions like schools, which provide similarity in learning circumstances. So this indicates that there is some sort of correlation between the process of learning, and the mental capacity which is developed through the learning. From this, we can say that there is some sort of similarity in the mental capacity of two distinct individuals who know how to do the same thing (ride a bike), but to conclude that these people share "beliefs" associated with this activity is not justified by this. There is a similarity in mental activity, not a similarity in belief.
The further problem, is that when we create a definition of "belief", and validly talk about beliefs, there is likewise a disconnect between the belief and the mental activity. So it can be true that two people have the same belief, but this does not necessitate that they have the same mental activity associated with that belief.
Not any proposal I've made, that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you having problems at work? If you need to talk to someone...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why's that?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Really? Not the belief that bikes are for riding? The belief that one sits on the saddle and pushes the pedals? That the brakes are for stopping? ... We've no idea at all what beliefs people might have?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why? Not all Oak trees are the same, that doesn't suddenly raise problems with us deciding that some trees are more similar to each other and calling that group 'Oaks'. But knowing you I expect you've got some problem with that too.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Who said anything about it 'necessitating' it? It's not necessary to call some trees Oaks, we just do.
Small-t truth I've been reserving for the truth we attribute to sentences, which is shown by the T-sentence -- the truth predicate can be dropped when using a sentence, and is added to a sentence under consideration. We come to understand small-t truth by learning the language in which said predicate is a part of.
Big-T truth I've been reserving for the substantive theories of truth, or even bigger picture notions that are sometimes equated with Truth -- such as the story of Jesus this thread began with.
Quoting Isaac
At our worst, yes.
Especially among us amateurs and enthusiasts.
The only "carrot" in the conversation, as far as I can see, is being able to expand one's own thoughts by hearing others. But we all have something invested in these stories so it can be easy to forget that.
That's a good summation.
Davidson points to Kuhn ‘s paradigms as examples of conceptual schemes, and so Kuhn included in his argument that, as you put it, ‘there's no point of talking about the other side of the filter, so what's the point in even having a filter as an object?’
But Kuhn’s paradigms aren’t specific to individuals, and they aren’t dependent on theoretical models either. A shared paradigm doesn’t require a shared theoretical
model, since it has to do primarily with intercorrelated practices. It seems to me the real difference between Davidson and Kuhn has to do with Davidson’s assumption ( I may have this wrong) that two people receiving the same stimulus must have the same sensation, which justifies his belief that a translator is always able to describe the world to which the language being translated applies.
“…while nomological relations between events (relations involving laws) depend on the descriptions
under which the events are given, relations of causality and identity obtain irrespective of descriptions – if the
icing-up of the road did indeed cause the skid, then it did so no matter how the events at issue are described.
(The form of description – whether mental or physical – is thus irrelevant to the fact that a particular causal
relation obtains).” (Stanford Encyclopedia)
Kuhn believes instead that our perceptions are thoughgoingly interpretively mediated, so we begin from multiple stimulus driven worlds.
Thanks. So, small-t might fit with the sort of use that amounts to statements about the world, Ramsey-like redundancy. Where to say "p is true" is simply to assert p?
Your big-t truth might more like Ramsey's 'problems in the vicinity'. More about the nature of belief than truth as a predicate?
Quoting Moliere
Yes, if they're told well. Philosophical positions are like pieces of music. Worth curating, but you have to be in the right mood to listen to each one.
Yup! The only thing I've asserted against the redundancy theory is the liar's paradox, since it gives the value false in addition to true -- and noted that while it's an interesting paradox, I don't think it counts against redundancy since it counts against every theory of truth: it's basically a wash, in terms of which theory to believe, since they all have answers to the liar's paradox -- and furthermore I think it's a bit of a feature of language more than something substantively interesting. But, still, good to note that particular riddle.
As for Ramsey, I can't claim to have read him. But encounters with the people on this forum and thinking through their thoughts have shifted my beliefs.
Quoting Isaac
True. Or, have the mental energy for it.
Though these days I think I'm more partisan than a curator would be. Curating is important, but eventually one has to commit.
Quoting Banno
Well, if you believe that Wittgenstein's point about a private language is well-founded, then it would follow that Davidson is correct to reject the notion of a private conceptual schema. It would be incoherent and unintelligible.
It seems to me to be like supposing that a form of life could be private.
I agree. If forms of life could be private, then so could language. To say that language can't be private, is to say that forms of life can't be private.
If one supposes that there are various, discreet forms of life, then one might be tempted to suppose them to be incommensurate. Something like that seems to sit with the lion comment.
But if forms of life were incommensurate, would we recognise them to be forms of life? It seems that in order to recognise certain behaviours as a form of life, we have to recognise the parallels with our own form of life. The language, practices and values of a form of life must be recognised as such in order for us to recognise a form of life.
So it seems that forms of life cannot the totally incommensurate, one to the other.
The interesting question then arrises as to the extent to which forms of life might differ, yet remain recognisable as forms of life.
This of course raises the question of relativism in Wittgenstein. Some suppose that the truth of any proposition is dependent on the form of life against which the proposition is set. But if, as argued above, in order to recognise some other form of life as such we must recognise some aspects of that form of life, then it follows that there are propositions that are true for both the other form of life and our own. To say that forms of life are recognisable as such is to say that they are commensurable, that they share common truths.
Hence, truth cannot be entirely relative to form of life.
I don't see our "forms of life" as being incommensurate, but as having a family resemblance. Although, with the lion example, I do see it as being incommensurate. We don't share much in common with a lion's form of life, which is why we wouldn't understand a lion if it could talk.
Quoting Banno
I'm not sure if we would have to recognize our own form of life in order to understand an account of forms of life in general. Wouldn't that be the same as saying, in order to understand a concept, I'd have to understand my own account of concept? We seem to understand what a form of life is, only after understanding forms of life in general, as is what happens with concepts.
Quoting Banno
I agree. There are some aspects of our forms of life that may not be commensurate, just as there are some aspects of games that aren't commensurate. However, there must be something in common, like the commensurability of the concept game. They share incommensurability and commensurability, both can be true at the same time, but not in the same way.
I don't know, is that as clear as mud?
That's not quite the argument. Rather, one could only recognise another form of life from within ones own, and by seeing that some aspects of the other form of life matched one's own.
IF we are to recognise another form of life then we must recognise some shared aspects.
When you say, "...one could only recognize another form of life from within one's own," are you using the phrase "from within one's own," as a private matter, or something broader, to include our forms of life generally as persons?
With the clarification, I believe I agree with this. It seems that we would recognize the forms of life of animals, right? There has to be something in common?
It seems so. The difference between animals and ourselves is that they do not have access to institutional structures such as language. In this regard our form of life is much richer.
So do we agree that at least some truths are not relative to a from of life?
There is a difference between truth being relative to you personally, as opposed to truth being relative to a language. Truth can be relative to a form of life, for e.g. bishops move diagonally, but it can also be dependent on facts separate from our forms of life. Some forms of life (other than our own) exclude the use of concepts, so there would be no common truths, but probably common beliefs.
I think we agree, but I'm not entirely sure.
Can you give an example of a "truth being relative to you personally"? Do you have in mind a preference for vanilla?
I'm also bothered by "facts separate from our forms of life". I'm not sure wha they might be.
And "Some forms of life (other than our own) exclude the use of concepts" - is this the observation that some forms of life exclude concepts found in others, or something else?
Yes, my preference for vanilla is a truth relative to me.
Quoting Banno
Well, the concept fact is relative to our forms of life, but what the facts sometimes refer to are things separate from our forms of life. For example, the Earth having one moon is not dependent on our forms of life.
Quoting Banno
It includes the forms of life that exclude certain concepts, but it also includes forms of life that exclude language, at least language that is as complex as our own.
The lion is an eater of flesh as many of us are. The lion is active sometimes and rests at others. The lion sleeps and perhaps even dreams. The lion seems to enjoy playing sometimes and cares for the young. The lion copulates. In all its vital features of life the lion does not seem so different to us.
I never understood that saying of Wittgenstein's, that we would not understand the lion if it could speak, to make any sense. If it did not speak English or a language we are familiar enough with, then of course we would not understand it, just as we don't understand anything spoken in an unfamiliar language. If the lion spoke in a familiar language, then why would we not understand it?
Ya, I could have worded that better. There are things that are incommensurate, but things that are also commensurate. So, both of these concepts apply.
Quoting Janus
The assumption is that the world of a lion is different enough, i.e., it's ability to think and use concepts would be so different from our own, that understanding the lion would be a great challenge, if we could understand at all. That's my take.
A powerful philosophical statement.
Kuhn's paradigms are certainly theoretical models, if theory is taken to be the propositions held to be true by the paradigm. As if the Copernican paradigm did not theorise that the Earth moves.
Further, Davidson points not just to Kuhn, including Whorf, Quine, Bergson. Feyerabend, Lakatos, Musgrave... all quite theoretical.
Quoting Joshs
Interesting. Davidson would presumably hold that two folk would overwhelmingly agree as to their beliefs, following the Principle of Charity. That's not at all the same as supposing that they have the same sensations. The commonality of belief is what justifies translation.
Quoting Joshs
...as does Davidson.
Right, but then that raises two questions; firstly do thinking and using concepts require language? If the answer is yes, then presumably if the lion were able to speak English then she would be able to think and use concepts in the ways that English enables her to.
The other question is as to whether animals are able to think and use concepts at all, If the answer is 'yes' then perhaps it would follow that the ability to acquire language relies on the ability to think and use concepts, in which case the lion would never, if her thinking and concepts are so different, be able to acquire the ability to speak English. Personally, I don't believe a lion's thoughts would be so different to our own. I think human exceptionalism is way overblown.
I think both are right: that is, we do think of knowledge as relatively persistent, and also that it is not as ephemeral as perception. But then the salient qualification is "relatively".
Generally, if we know how to do something, we don't forget it so quickly. I used to know how to play the 'Moonlight Sonata', but I haven't kept up practicing it, so now I can remember only the first ten bars or so (strange that I generally seem to remember the early, and not the later, parts of pieces I have forgotten how to play the whole of).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't see the "citizen" example as being relevant given it is not about knowledge, but about how one might be classified. As for the others: I know how to ride a bike if I can get on one and ride it, and I know my mother's name if I can use it in a sentence.
I would say that if I had forgotten my mother's name temporarily, then for that temporal period, I did not know her name, even if I could be said to have the potential to know it, since it would likely come to me soon enough. But as I said before, I think this is a matter of definition more than anything else.
One reason I'm not so fond of the idea of meaning as use, is that use is vast and possibly diverse, and we each may have our own different ideas or impressions of what "standard" usage is. That said I'm OK with the idea that meaning is shown by use because that can be perfectly consistent with there being different meanings of terms, and disagreements about those meanings, since there may be different usages.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What you are driving at here is not so clear to me. Could you add some flesh to the bones, or give an example to make it clearer?
.
I know how to ride a bike, and I don't think I've ever held the belief that bikes are for riding, or the belief that one sits on the saddle and pushes the peddles. Nor was I ever taught these beliefs when I learned to ride a bike. It was demonstrated to me how to do it, and I was given guidance and assistance. Now, I just jump on the bike and go. Sorry to disappoint you, but I've never accepted these beliefs, and I am being very honest. You might ask me now, if I believe in those things, and I could consider them, and give you an honest answer. But that would be after the fact. I haven't considered those particular questions before now, so I've never made those judgements nor developed those beliefs.
Those trivial, mundane things are not the type of thing that I believe in. When I want to go, I just jump on the bike and it goes. and when I want to slow down I grip the brakes. without actually believing in things like chains, sprockets, and gears, handle bars and seats, etc.. Just like when I want to walk, I don't rely on beliefs about the capacity of my legs to hold me, or their ability to move me.
And when I get in my car, I do this without believing in the roles of driveshafts and transmissions, flywheels, crankshafts, cam shafts, connecting rods, pistons, and numerous parts which I can't even name. I can't even honestly assert that I hold the belief that turning the key will start the engine. I just turn the key, with the expectation that the engine will start, anticipating. Sometimes it doesn't start and I'm left disappointed. Then, when I have trouble with the car, I might develop the belief that turning the key will not start it. That's very odd because I never developed the belief that turning the key would start the car, it's just something I learned how to do. But when it doesn't work, I'm quick to develop the belief that it doesn't work. And that belief is what reminds me not to do what I was previously in the habit of doing (turning the key for the purpose of starting the car). So the belief is used as a reminder for me, when activities which I normally engage in habitually, without associated beliefs, are not working properly. I need to use the belief to deter me from trying to do something which my intuition says ought to work, but I've found out, actually will not work. I use the belief to counteract my intuition.
Quoting Isaac
I said that different people observed to be acting in a similar way does not produce the conclusion that they have a similar belief. Now you come up with something about naming similar trees. That is not relevant. I wasn't talking about naming the similar acts, like we name similar trees, I was talking about the assumption that there is a similar belief associated with those similar acts.
For example, many things will fall if dropped from a height, due to the force of gravity. We would never conclude that since these things act in a similar way, they must hold a similar belief. Nor would we conclude that plants which grow in a similar way hold similar beliefs. So why would we conclude that if different people act in similar ways they must hold similar beliefs?
Is an expectation not a kind of believing? Is there a salient difference?
Yes of course, there is a big difference. To expect is to think of a future event, that it is likely. A belief is a strong conviction concerning what is.
That's your definition of those terms. Mine is different: I'd say to expect something will happen is to believe it will happen. Of course, if in the moment you consciously thought about it you would realize there is a chance that when you turn the key the engine will not start. In that case you might not be said to believe it will happen, but that it is likely, or more likely than not, to happen.
I would say the same about your expectation: after such conscious consideration of the possibilities you would not expect that it will happen, but expect that it is more likely to happen than not. So, I'm not seeing much, if any difference between the meanings and implications of the two terms 'belief' and 'expectation'.
This is the value of introspection. It allows us to make these distinctions such as the difference between an expectation and a belief. Sure, we can simply define then as having the same meaning, but then we need to come up with different terms to describe the differences which are very real within us.
Look at the difference I described, instead of trying to make the difference go away. To expect is an attitude toward the future. A belief is an attitude toward what is, and that implies at the present. If you do not like the terms used, "expect" and "belief", perhaps they bring unnecessary baggage, then we can just talk about the different attitudes without laying any names on them. The distinct attitudes are one toward what will happen in the future, and the other toward what is the case, now. We could add another distinct attitude toward what happened in the past.
The point is, that in learning how to ride a bike, or knowing how to ride a bike, we do not rely on the attitude directed toward what is the case, now. We rely on an attitude concerning what will happen, in the future, if we perform a specific act, and proceed in that way. Do you agree that there is a distinction to be made between the attitude toward what is the case , now, and the attitude toward what will happen, in the future.
I guess it depends how you define human exceptionalism. It seems to me that all you have to do is look at what we accomplish, in areas of science, or in other areas of study, as compared to what other animals accomplish. The way we interact with the world is generally far more complex. This isn't to say that animals aren't more advanced in some areas, but if you look at the overall picture, humans generally will outperform an animal in terms of what we can accomplish.
I would call the passage from ignorance to knowledge learning. You learned your mother's name from her or from someone else who knew it. On your usage, by remembering you would learn your mother's name (again) from someone (yourself) who doesn't know it.
I think what you call a "potential to know" is what the rest of us call trying to remember something you do know. The idea that you might be able to remember something you do not know, is puzzling.
Did you come up with this usage of "know" yourself?
1. Correspondence (science)
2. Coherence (math)
3. Pragmatic (religion)
Quoting Michael
As Michael noted, Tarski didn't think of the T-sentence as being a definition of truth and, I'd add, neither was his actual definition of truth circular. Here's Tarski's comments from his 1944 paper:
Quoting The Semantic Conception of Truth: and the Foundations of Semantics - Alfred Tarski, 1944
For example, consider a model [*] where there are a set of objects including white snow. In that model, the sentential function "x is white" is satisfied by snow. Regular sentences, such as "snow is white", are special cases of sentential functions and are satisfied by all or no objects (for technical details, see Haack, p206-207). Thus truth (in a model) is defined in terms of satisfaction which, in turn, is defined in terms of inclusion in a set of objects.
--
[*] "... in his original paper, Tarski gives an absolute rather than a model-theoretic definition; 'satisfies' and hence 'true' is defined with respect to sequences of objects in the actual world, not with respect to sequences of objects in a model or 'possible world' (e.g. 'there is a city north of Birmingham' is true, absolutely, but false in a model in which the domain is, say, {London, Exeter, Birmingham, Southampton}" - Haack
Others have said otherwise.
It was, after all, a ways back.
Quoting Sam26
Can you describe sight and colour to a man born blind?
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/making-sense-of-how-the-blind-see-color/
Yes. On the old forum there was a blind poster named Maya. I think a few people tried to explain sight and colour to her but she said that she couldn't make any sense of it at all.
The subjective quality of visual (and other) experiences is private, but not "incoherent, unintelligible".
Sure. Bye.
Well worth a read. Apparently Davidson (much quoted here) used to have a term 'Ramsey Effect' for the revelation that one's new philosophical insight had actually already been discovered by Ramsey!
In seeking an answer to the question, “what is truth”, that passage says, in a modernized, which is to say, seriously overblown, manner, nothing effectively superior to the entry on pg 45.
Anthropology/psychology (satisfaction) to metaphysics (truth), is limestone/gypsum to a biscuit recipe.
My interest in this discussion has been whether truth remains recognisable once correspondence is jettisoned in favour of deflationism, and/or whether deflationism without correspondence can make sense of the notion of truth. I have attempted to argue that deflationism-without-correspondence leads to truth relativism. The discussion now appears to have moved on, so I thought I'd try and summarise my concerns.
I have not been alone in arguing against what @Banno presents above. My argument against it is that it collapses the distinction between sentence and world. It follows that there either is no world and propositions are true, or else there are no propositions and the world is true.
However, my concerns are based more in science (or my view of it as a layperson, at least). If the proposition "water boils at 100 degrees celsius" has no correspondence to the world, then it is true only because we (or most of us, or most experts) say that it's true, not because that's how the world is, or how water is. This proposition about the boiling point of water (at sea level) might nowadays be accepted as a kind of analytic truth, given that it is so well established, and therefore is more conducive to the deflationary view of truth. But what about less established truths at the edges of scientific research? What is the point of investigating the truth of the statement "three moons of our solar system contain water" if it's all just talk or opinion unmoored from the facts?
Since Wittgenstein has been mentioned, and the use theory of meaning is seen as being closely associated with deflationism, I find that this quote from PI shows that Wittgenstein may not have been the deflationist he is taken to be:
Some have rightly pointed out that not everything is a name and that not all words correspond to things in the world. I'll admit that this makes deflationism seem appealing. What I take issue with is deflationism as a wholesale rejection of correspondence. Maybe I'm alone in (mis)understanding deflationism in this way. I don't know.
Quoting Banno
I think most correspondence theorists (and others) understand the RHS to be a fact, too. When understood in this way, the truth bearer on the LHS of the T-sentence corresponds to the fact on the RHS of the T-sentence, or vice versa. In order to avoid correspondence, it seems necessary to argue either that the LHS and RHS are both sentences or are both boiling kettles.
Maybe a way to think on this is to say that there isn't always some material component to facts.
The abstractions are like this -- logical rules, arithmetic.
After all, you'd likely agree that "A or not-A" is true iff A or not-A, where A is a proposition. There are times where this rule is put to question, but generally speaking people see the sense of the proposition -- it's a tautology.
There's nothing material that corresponds to a tautology, though. And there's even possibly an infinite number of tautologies (depending on what the space of abstractions is -- something real or not).
As I see it, the deflationist is allowing for a wider interpretation of truth than the correspondence theorist, and it allows for things like abstractions to be true or propositions with empty-names to be true (or false) without the possible mystification/temptation of non-entity-entities.
And, in a way, you can just interpret the T-sentence as analytically spelling out what correspondence consists of -- I don't think these things are in opposition, per se, only that they can be read that way. In answer to your conclusion of your paragraph here, I'd say that the RHS is both a sentence and a kettle, and the LHS is a sentence.
I agree. What I’m arguing against is the deflationary view that there is never any material component to facts; that facts are no more than language use.
Quoting Moliere
If they’re both sentences, then it is a tautology and tells us nothing. Otherwise, it is a correspondence (if true), is it not?
I think the suspicion is that the only way we'd be able to set out material facts is through language, and that's what the RHS is purportedly doing, but it's funny because we're really just imagining the scenario. It doesn't add anything, or say anything, when in addition to the T-sentence we have:
"The kettle is boiling" is true iff the kettle is boiling AND that the kettle is boiling is a material fact.
The latter meaning is already contained in an actual utterance, if one is a materialist or correspondence theorist. If one is an idealist, though --
"The kettle is boiling" is true iff the kettle is boiling AND the kettle in our intuition is boiling
Whether the kettle is material or ideal "drops out", regardless of the speaker -- the sentence works whether you append the metaphysical belief onto it or not. And, in fact, it'd be more confusing if we appended our metaphysical beliefs to our theories of truth because then we'd just be begging the question in favor of what we already believe (one motivation for developing truth sans-metaphysics is that it might allow us to actually talk metaphysics in a more productive way)
As far as I understand it, the deflationary view is that truth isn't a property, or if it is then it isn't a substantial property. The sentence "'snow is white' is true" is nothing more (or not much more) than the sentence "snow is white".
It doesn't say anything about whether or not snow being white is a material fact.
I am curious why naming plays no part in Tarski's T-sentence, as naming seems to affect the truth or falsity of the T-sentence itself. Am I missing something ?
The problem of naming
Tarski proposed:
The T-sentence - "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white.
A definition of truth can be obtained in a very simple way from that of another semantic notion, namely, of the notion of satisfaction.
Satisfaction is a relation between arbitrary objects and certain expressions called "sentential functions." These are expressions like "x is white,"
A sentence such as "snow is white" is true if in the sentential sentence "x is white", x is satisfied by snow.
200,000 years ago snow had not been named. Today, snow has been named, whether "white" in English or "schnee" in German. Therefore, there must have been a point in time when snow was named "snow", ie, what Kripke calls "baptised".
Although the right hand side of Tarski's biconditional is a metalanguage, as he uses the example of the object snow and the property white, for the moment consider a world whereby snow is white. In a world whereby snow is not white, or we consider the general T-sentence "P is Q" is true IFF R is S, the same problem of naming occurs.
Before naming snow as "snow" and white as "white"
As "white" didn't exist, in the sentential function "x is white", there is no x that satisfies "white", therefore "snow is white" can never be true.
After naming snow as "snow" and white as "white"
As snow has been named "snow" and white has been named "white", in the sentential function "x is white", x is always satisfied by snow. Therefore, "snow is white" is always true.
In summary, the T-sentence is false before snow had been named "snow" and white named "white". The T-sentence is always true after snow had been named "snow" and white named "white". IE, the T-sentence itself may be either true or false dependant upon how its parts have been named.
Do we all basically agree that we never get "outside" of language. Truth is a matter of comparing a statement to another statement?
Most of the time I live my life without saying anything. There's more to the world than just language. Those other things in the world are often what make a statement true.
It's just that we have a mystery box in the flowchart specifically regarding that last sentence. It looks like you've stepped out beyond the speaker and the world to affirm that this is what truth is.
I think you're happy with this mystery box. A number of philosophers from Nietzsche to Foucault weren't so happy with it.
What’s the mystery about it? That last sentence often refers to some non-linguistic thing in the world. They’re the things we see and feel and eat.
Quoting Tate
Beyond the speaker but not beyond the world.
Quoting Banno
I tend to follow Joseph Rouse’s reading of Kuhn:
“Paradigms should not be understood as beliefs (even tacit beliefs) agreed upon by community members, but instead as exemplary ways of conceptualizing and intervening in particular situations. Accepting a paradigm is more like acquiring and using a set of skills than it is like understanding and believing a statement.
Scientists USE paradigms rather than believing them. The use of a paradigm in research typically addresses related problems by employing shared concepts, symbolic expressions, experimental and mathematical tools and procedures, and even some of the same theoretical statements. Scientists need only understand how to use these various elements in ways that others would accept. These elements of shared practice thus need not presuppose any comparable unity in scientists’ beliefs about what they are doing when they use them.
Indeed, one role of a paradigm is to enable scientists to work successfully without having to provide a detailed account of what they are doing or what they believe about it. Kuhn noted that scientists
“can agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting to produce, a full interpretation or rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpretation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding research….
I [once] conceived normal science as a result of a consensus among the members of a scientific community ... in order to account for the way they did research and, especially, for the unanimity with which they ordinarily evaluated the research done by others. ...What I finally realized ... was that no consensus of quite that kind was required. ...If [scientists] accepted a sufficient set of standard [problem solutions], they could model their own subsequent research on them without needing to agree about which set of characteristics of these examples made them standard, justified their
acceptance. (Kuhn 1977a, xviii–xix)
The result of this recognition is to think of scientific communities as composed of fellow practitioners rather than of fellow believers.”
So if a sentence is "the kettle is black", then presumably there's some nonlinguistic element which can render it true. If you say "the kettle is black" and I say "the kettle is not black" the truth of the matter is determined, not by language, but by the actual kettle and its actual colour? Is that what you mean?
Quoting Banno
Are there examples of certain forms of life being completely invisible to me? What about scientific conceptualizations of nature? Are these forms of life?
Isn’t the history of science littered not just with reinterpretations or falsifications of earlier conceptual domains but of the production of entire domains that simply didn’t exist for earlier eras?
One sign of mystery is a collection of arguments known as the slingshot. It's the reason we say the extension of any sentence is it's truth value. All truths designate the same Great Fact.
So what about if I dispute your claim by saying that the silver coloured screw in my kitchen drawer is still part of 'the kettle' even though it fell off years ago. You say it isn't.What fact of the world could resolve that for us?
Or if I say that your 'very, very dark gray' is sufficiently dark to qualify as 'black', but you disagree. What fact of the world could resolve that for us?
It seems the truth of "the kettle is black" is entirely dependent on the meaning of 'kettle' and 'black'. All about language.
Have I just chosen a bad example where there's a rare amount of ambiguity?
Not entirely dependent. “The kettle is black” is not true by definition. The truth of “the kettle is black” is determined by both the meaning of “the kettle is black” and by whether or not some non-linguistic feature of the world satisfies that definition.
You can change the truth of “the kettle is black” either by changing the meaning of the sentence or by painting the kettle a different colour.
And why do statements have the truth value they do? Why is it “the kettle is black” which is true and not “the kettle is red”? Some non-linguistic feature of the world has to be a certain way. The object referred to by the phrase “the kettle” has to have the colour property referred to by the word “black”.
You didn't look at the slingshot argument, did you?
Sure. Correspondence theory is the correct definition of truth. If you want to explain to a toddler what truth is, just tell them it's when a statement corresponds to reality. :up:
Yes, a certain linguistic way.
Quoting Michael
Or explain 'property'.
Any nonlinguistic feature? Does that include the screw in the drawer or not? Because without determining that, we can't say if the expression is true or not (using this method). We can't check if 'the kettle' is black if we don't know what, of all we see, is 'the kettle'.
We can't check if what we see is 'black' if we don't know how dark a shade constitutes 'black'.
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
I've pulled these quotes in order to try to get a handle on something that bothers me about how deflation should be understood. It's as if you are of the opinion that a deflationary account does not permit sentences to be about how things are. Hence you think it leads to truth relativism, that sentences are true regardless of how things are, that water doesn't boil at 100?, and that deflationist amounts to talk unmoored from the facts.
Deflation does not seek to make kettles and boiling water disappear, or to unmoor the words "kettle" and "boiling" from their use.
It's just about the way the word "true" works. it's the observation that "It is true that the kettle is boiling" is the same, in certain specifiable ways, as "the kettle is boiling". That specification is still that both sentences are true exactly if the kettle is boiling.
Rather than unmooring sentences from the world, deflation sets that sentences are about the world.
There's more to say, but I think I will stop there and wait for your response. If what I have said here is an accurate diagnoses of your account, then that's were we should focus our attention.
Yes! And moreover, we tend to consider far too few examples of T-sentences and correspondence to get a good grasp or their variety.
it's probably better for some folk to think of deflation as widening correspondence rather than denying it. It's reasonably clear what kettles and snow correspond to, but the notion becomes fraught is we talk of numbers or colours or institutional facts or virtues. To be sure, correspondence theorists have answers for all these, but they involve ad hoc hypothesising that stretches credibility.
So we might consider "snow is red" is true if snow is red, which is a true T-sentence.
As is "seven is twice nine" is true IFF seven is twice nine, where we have a clear idea of what seven and nine and doubling are, until someone asks what it is to which they correspond.
And it's true that mercy is a virtue IFF "mercy is a virtue" is true; yet there are volumes on what it is to be a virtue.
That is not what deflation is claiming.
It is pointing out that (P ? "P" is true). It then adds that one way or another, t at is all there is to the truth of sentences.
It is not denying that sentence are about stuff.
P ? "P is true"
You've got your quotes in the wrong place. P is already a name.
P ? True(P)
I'm just here to help.
I might add the obvious point that 'the Earth moves" is both a belief about the Earth and a methodological maxim. It is a belief that will determine the experiments one does.
Beliefs just are "ways of conceptualising and intervening in particular situations". Meaning as use.
I'm not familiar with Joseph Rouse, but you and he seem to have in common the desire to juxtapose two things where there is only one.
I wondered if someone would jump at that. I'm surprised it was you.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
is illformed. It'd be like saying
The kettle is boiling ? Fred
Fred does not take on a truth value.
While I was doing some stretches outside there was a female fairy wren in the hanging baskets, Skittling quickly in search of breakfast. It has a family and at this time of year probably a nest nearby, perhaps with eggs or chicks.
I could follow it and make the invisible visible.
It's not as if a form of life cannot be subject to change.
Yep.
It's as if @Michael would have us say, that the kettle is boiling is not a fact, but corresponds to a fact that is outside of language; and when asked what that fact outside of language is, he says it is the boiling kettle.
SO he has it that:
Quoting Michael
I would agree, and you might too, if he instead said "some feature of the world satisfies that definition", dropping the confusion of "non-linguistic". It's the boiling kettle.
One must drop the pretence of being able to get outside of language while still using language. Language is already about the way things are.
Oh you're right! Reached for quotes to group, so that it's
P ? (P is true)
instead of
(P ? P) is true.
But that's not what quotes are for.
Wasn't making a point about the order, duh, but, as I said, about your quotes around P in
Quoting Banno
That's not what you mean. Here ' "P" ' is a name for ' P ', which is a name for a proposition.
That part you obviously agree with, since you passed over it in silence.
I didn't say that.
Quoting Banno
I get "outside of language" most of the day. When I wake up and eat breakfast I don't narrate my life.
It's an illicit substitution, as @Michael and @Andrew M like to point out, but there are ways of dealing with this.
Yep. Hence the "as if".
Quoting Michael
Yep. It's a form of life, if you will. Language is embedded in breakfast and waking and...
You might not narrate your life, but you might.
And in any case, that is a subtle shifting of the goalpost.
I also might paint my life, but it doesn't follow from this that painting is "embedded" in breakfast and waking. You really need to be more explicit with what you're saying because it seems vacuous as-is.
Perhaps if you read more widely...
The point at hand is the kettle boiling. That's a fact. But you want there to be another thing, that shall not be named, that is nevertheless the fact of the kettle boiling.
I ain't buying it.
Always, already, interpreted.
Why would you think I want that?
Huh?
I don't want that. So I'm asking you why you (wrongly) think that I do.
Here we go again.
Perhaps, if I am wrong, you might explain what it is you do want. Rather than asking me to guess.
Indeed, you need it to be raining. Which is already to interpret the world, to use language.
That is, for "it is raining" to be true, it needs to be raining.
Which is the exact point made by the T-sentence.
SO what, if anything, is our disagreement?
So you're agreeing that we never make it outside language. Talk if truthmakers is language on holiday.
There is no outside, nor inside. That terminology is fraught.
You tell me. You were the one who decided to mention me when you said "it's as if @Michael would have us say, that the kettle is boiling is not a fact" even though I wouldn't have us say that, and then later "you want there to be another thing, that shall not be named" even though I don't want that.
So you don't understand the question?
I don't care either way. I've just been reading about Foucault and Nietzsche, so I'm interested in the idea of dropping the will to truth, which means dropping the assumption that truth-seeking is a good unto itself.
A side issue is that we never escape the bounds of language, so to speak. Truth is not a matter of comparing a statement to an uninterpreted reality. Particularly I was intrigued that when I told Michael that, he understands the question. For some reason, you don't.
I agree, so long as you do not conclude that there are no true statements.
You're right, you're right -- forgot for a moment that this is just a schema, and it includes the quotes to produce a name for the substituted sentence --- since "... is true" needs a referring expression, which P isn't. It's just a place-holder, not a name, not even a variable.
As long as you deflate that, you agree with Nietzsche. The only extra thing is the realization that truth is actually about power. Putin and Trump are doing something primal: using a thirst for truth as a weapon.
I thought you were done here. Any further thoughts on knowledge?
You hush your postmodern mouth!
And give me ten push-ups, or ten Our Fathers, whichever you like.
What?
It's just part of the death of God. You don't get a better condo in heaven for being a faithful truth seeker.
That truth is not about correspondence between a statement and uninterrupted reality. That's Nietzsche.
And as said elsewhere, the power of truth derives from its illocutionary force, while the topic here has been the logical structure of true statements.
SO are you going to argue that what makes a statement true is one's willing it to be true? That might be fun.
I think correspondence is the only truth theory Nietzsche knew about. It's not that truth is inherently about power. There's a natural drive to know things. It's that when one group gains power using lies, a call for truth-seeking goes up from the defeated.
Notice how Judaism and Christianity call Satan the Father of the Lie, where Jesus is the Truth, the Light, and the Way. Nietzsche says the way to understand why truth is so central to Abrahamic religions is to see how it relates to power.
Quoting Banno
It may be that logic is the tail and the history of power relations is the dog. Maybe.
Quoting Banno
Ugh. I'm no Nietzsche. Just recently on this forum, a bunch of posters ganged up on me and persistently misinterpreted what I was saying. When I tried to explain, it was rejected and more piled on. They were trying to control the truth through bullying.
So I put up a thread that proved them wrong and none of them even noticed, the assholes.
It would be hard for me to argue that the superior will controls the truth. I think some truth theorists wouldn't be able to escape that conclusion though.
Quoting Banno
This is incorrect Banno. The T-sentence says "it is raining is true iff it is raining. This does not say anything about the meaning of "to be raining".
Either "it is raining" is always, already interpreted, as you assert, in which case "to be raining" is something completely different from "it is raining", or it is not already interpreted.
Having it both ways, which you demonstrate over and over again is your desire, is a matter of dishonesty; the claim that you can eat your cake and have it too.
Just done with my experiment. Still thinking about truth.
I remember learning that one way to think about T-sentences is that a sentence is used on the right but mentioned on the left. Which would be helpful if using were anywhere near as clear as mentioning.
You make a great point and you almost had me convinced there. However, my concerns about truth relativism linger. If deflationism is the neutral view of truth "sans-metaphysics", then the facts of reality are irrelevant to truth. If true statements do not correspond to how the world is, then what makes them true? The worry is that we can never be mistaken about what we say is true, because there is no more to truth than our collective say-so.
Yes, that's my concern and what I'm attempting to argue against.
Yes. Deflationism rejects correspondence - specifically, the correspondence between a truth bearer and the facts - doesn't it?
Quoting Banno
You've conflated the facts with the use of words here. The use of a sentence does not boil water.
Quoting Banno
How does this differ from the correspondence theory?
So we have Tarski explicating the requirements of any semantic theory of truth using T-schema in the first part of his paper, then developing that for formal languages using designation and satisfaction between an object language and a metalanguage. We then have various uses of T-sentences to explicate both deflation and correspondence. Then Davidson uses them to explain meaning in terms of truth. Now we have Gupta's oddly complex variation, with two novel logical operators, truth introduction and truth elimination...
1. A
2. "A" is true (truth introduction)
and
1. A is true
2. "A" (truth elimination)
These promise to do much the same sort of task as one might set for T-sentences, apparently bypassing (or just ignoring) the issue of substitution into opaque contexts, which in any case runs counter to our intuitions.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545102
Not conflating so much as recognising.
Quoting Luke
It seems we have differing views of what is involved in each.
How does this differ from the deflationary theory? '"the kettle is boiling" is true' just says that the kettle is boiling.
Yeah, kids these days with their logic and stuff...
Maybe - the quoted part on the LHS is the name of the sentence on the RHS.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, but naming it doesn't affect what it is. 200,000 years ago, snow wasn't named "snow", and the color white wasn't named "white", yet snow was still white. At least, so the scientists tell us.
Quoting RussellA
The names didn't exist but the things named did. The T-schema didn't exist either, but the things that we might later schematize did.
So perhaps it would help if you were to set out what correspondence, in your view, is?
For my part, if we are to talk about correspondence in any workable way, we would be talking about the material equivalence in the t-schema.
And I suspect, following the usual arguments for deflation, that any alternative view will leave out something of worth in our notion of truth, or include too much.
In particular, a theory espousing correspondence to the facts introduces unnecessary ontological individuals - the unnameable boiling kettle that @Michael's view seems to requirer.
I’ve already told you:
Quoting Luke
You failed to respond.
Quoting Banno
Again, you failed to respond to the argument that sentences are not kettles and that using sentences does not boil water. You want to collapse the distinction between the facts and language use, but you offer no response to this.
As Meta said, you want to have your cake and eat it too.
I'm nonplussed. You don't seem to me to be saying anything useable.
Then how? You say that the truth of "the kettle is black " depends on both that the kettle is black and that some hidden value is in such and such a state, but then you say absolutely any state will do, so long as it's referred to by the expression "the kettle is black". So the state of that hidden value drops out of the picture, since it can be in absolutely any state so long as that state is described by the expression "the kettle is black". Hence "the kettle is black" is true if the kettle is black.
Redundancy doesn't reject realism, nor need it be relativistic. You might say, as I do, that some hidden state constrains our neural models of it. You might also say, as I would, that we have an interest in those neural models being at least similar in function so that we can cooperate over manipulating those hidden states. You might also say that language is used (among other things) as a tool to this end. But since all of this goes on subconsciously, most of the time, and, most importantly, those putative 'hidden states' are simply hypothetical matters used in a scientific model of how brains work, there's simply not a mechanism by which they can act as truth-makers for sentence in English, without being entirely subsumed by simply 'the kettle is black'.
Absolutely. It's what I've tried to get at in my response above.
I used Ramsey's arguments against Russell in my response to @Michael (or at least, my interpretation of it). It answers the same question you're asking here. If something 'outside' of language constitutes the 'kettle' regarding which we're assessing the truth of some property, then what is it?
You might say "it's that collection of molecules" or something, but I could disagree and say that it properly includes some additional molecules nearby, or historically attached. No fact of the world could resolve that disagreement. Even 'molecules' can be disputed. Is "boiling" exactly at gaseous states, or is it when the water visibly bubbles, or is that just 'simmering'? Does 'boiling' require a lot more bubbles? How much of the water in the kettle has to be gaseous for it to be "boiling"? And so on...
We don't seem to have a connection between the causes of our language use and the language itself which are specific enough to act as truth-makers for any language use. So the truth of "the kettle is boiling" cannot go any further than that the kettle is boiling, without disintegrating.
This is an objection to correspondence. I don't see how that answers my objection to redundancy - that redundancy collapses facts into language use. Is the boiling kettle true, or is the statement about the boiling kettle true? Or both? Is reality true or are statements true?
But my real concern is this:
Quoting Isaac
With respect to truth, what is the difference between the correspondence theory and a redundancy that doesn't reject realism?
The SEP article on the correspondence theory states:
Quoting SEP article on The Correspondence Theory of Truth
Rather than excising facts, realism (or redundancy-plus-realism) allows facts back in as truthmakers.
The statement. The boiling kettle can't be 'true' since there are no matters, outside of language, which could make it so.
Quoting Luke
I tried to explain that within my response that you quoted. The fact that some 'real' hidden states might constrain our neural models doesn't have any mechanism by which it can make sentences true or not. A sentence cannot 'correspond' to something other than by definition, and definition is not specific enough to hook into whatever hidden states we might theorise constrain it.
Therefore, there are no boiling kettles outside of language, either? There are only statements about kettles but no actual kettles?
Quoting Isaac
The kettle itself; not merely talk about a kettle.
Quoting Isaac
I don't believe there's much controversy about what a kettle is.
Quoting Isaac
Boiling point
Quoting Isaac
I don't see that specificity matters. Redundancy without realism leads to relativism and a disconnection of language from the facts of the world. If you accept realism, then you also accept some form of facts, correspondence and truthmaking.
Quoting Isaac
Then what is the point of testing a theory in science?
The act of naming is linguistic, but the thing named is not linguistic. A kettle is not a word. A kettle being black is not a sentence.
I've not said anything about some hidden value. The truth of "the kettle is black" depends on both the meaning of the sentence "the kettle is black" and on the kettle being black, the latter being a non-linguistic, material feature of the world (assuming materialism for the sake of argument). Assuming reductionism and naïve realism (again for the sake of argument), the kettle being black is the existence of particular particles at particular locations in space. This has nothing to do with language (even if language is required to talk about it).
Or if materialism is unwarranted, then perhaps phenomenalism is the case, and the kettle being black is the occurrence of a particular sensory experience, which again has nothing to do with language (even if language is required to talk about it).
The world isn't just a conversation we have with each other. There is more to the world than language, and the existence and behaviour of these non-linguistic parts of the world are often the things that make a sentence true. I get wet when I stand out in the rain, not because of the sentence "it is raining", but because of the water falling from the sky.
No. Language is what delineates 'kettle' as an object. Without it, there's just 'the stuff that kettles are drawn from'.
Quoting Luke
So, outside of our talk, is the screw in the drawer part of the kettle or not?
Quoting Luke
So is the screw in the drawer part of the kettle or not?
Quoting Luke
... is the scientific definition. It take a colloquial definition (one where I need to see a good volume of bubbles before I'll say the kettle is boiling). what fact of the world-outside-of-language, tells you I'm wrong?
Quoting Luke
Not at all. I laid this out (you don't seem to be actually reading the things I'm writing - if I'm not being clear, perhaps you might say so). What is real might well constrain our language. That is is not specific enough to act as truth-maker, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Quoting Luke
To get a better theory?
Quoting Michael
What particular particles? Do they include the screw in the drawer or not?
Quoting Michael
What sensory experience? The one I say is that of a kettle, or the one you say is that of a kettle?
Quoting Michael
Do you? Or do you get damp when you stand out in drizzle? If you're wearing a coat are you still getting wet? Does the sentence "I didn't really get wet, just a bit damp" make no sense to you?
Possibly, it's ambiguous. But if there are no particles, just the sentence "the kettle is black", then is it true?
Quoting Isaac
Either. But if there were neither, just the sentence "the kettle is black", then is it true?
Quoting Isaac
Yes, yes, a little, and no.
But if there is no water falling from the sky, just the sentence "it is raining", then is it true?
Your arguments for the ambiguity of language do not refute my point. It still requires that there is something in addition to the sentences "it is raining" and "the kettle is black" for these sentences to be true. Truth depends on more than just language.
Absolutely. And we're agreed there. But if what it relies on can't be specified (does it include the screw or not?), then it can't act as truth-maker. Worse, if what it relies on merely need be something, but not any specific thing, then it drops out of conversation. Which is all redundancy is saying.
Quoting Michael
I don't think the disagreement between @Luke and @Michael, on the one hand, and @Banno and @Isaac, on the other, is primarily about truth or facts, but about reference.
Michael and Luke take "the kettle" as a referring expression, which means there is something that it refers to, and that something is not itself, but a concrete object. Then Isaac and Banno point out that what "the kettle" (here, an expression is being mentioned) refers to is simply the kettle (and here it is being used).
There are further arguments, but first it would be nice to see the four of you agree
(1) "the kettle" is a a referring expression; and
(2) what "the kettle" refers to, or can be used to refer to, is the kettle; and
(3) "the kettle" is an expression, and is not the same as the concrete object the kettle; and
(4) the kettle is a concrete object, and is not the same as the expression "the kettle".
If there's not agreement on this much, we need a different conversation.
One down, three to go.
Or shall we make it four? What about it, @Tate? Does "the kettle" refer to the kettle, or, if you prefer, can it be used in a sentence to refer to the kettle?
It's 4 I'd quibble over. I'm not sure in what sense we can say the kettle is a concrete object if we can't agree on what that concrete object constitutes (and yet still unproblematically use the expression 'the kettle'). If we can use "the kettle" without issue, and yet can't even say whether the thing includes the screw in the drawer or not, it is hard to see how the kettle could be a concrete object.
But it depends how you're using 'concrete' here. I think the world consists of those objects we, collectively, identify with our forms of life (our language, for modern humans). So the kettle is definitely an object in the world, in that sense. But that's not this world-outside-language that @Luke and @Michael seem to be reaching for.
That world seems closer to what I would call 'hidden states'. But hidden states are a hypothetical notion in a scientific model. There is (according to the model) a relationship between hidden states and our shared objects, but it's a constraining one, not a determining one.
You just agreed the contrary. You said "yes" when I asked if the material particular matter was any particular matter. So it isn't made true by the existence of a particular material object, since any material particular matter will do, it's always true.
Did I? Where? If I did then it was a mistake.
I asked...
Quoting Isaac
...and you answered...
Quoting Michael
But if it...
Quoting Michael
...then my original question stands unanswered. Does this particular matter the truth about the colour of the kettle depends on, include the screw in the drawer or not?
The "sure" was actually a response to the rest of your comment. Sorry for not being clear.
Quoting Isaac
That's for us to decide.
I really don't understand the point you are trying to make. That words and phrases can be ambiguous isn't that the truth of a sentence like "the kettle is black" doesn't depend on the existence of a material object (or the occurrence of a sensory experience).
Yep. Using language.
The truth of "the kettle is black" cannot be determined by hidden states because nothing in those hidden states determines that they should be a kettle, nor exhibit the property 'black'. We determine that by language use.
But it's still the case that whichever matter we decide 'counts' as being the kettle must exist for the sentence "the kettle exists" to be true.
Getting ahead of ourselves here, but I'll say this much: the kettle is literally "outside language" in just the sense that it is not itself the expression "the kettle" or any other expression; but it is also not, shall we say, 'untouched' by language, if you are correct that it is only an object insofar as it is collectively identified by use of the expression "the kettle". But if it is so identified, identified by the use of language, and by our forms of life more broadly, as the man said, then it is the thing in that sense identified by our use of the expression "the kettle". If it's not, then there has been no collective identifying of something by use of the expression "the kettle".
Yes. But since it could be literally any matter at all, to claim that the truth of any sentence involving kettles depends on this fact would render all statements about kettles always true, since there's always some matter.
The sentence "the kettle is black" is true at T[sub]1[/sub]. I paint the kettle red at T[sub]2[/sub]. The sentence "the kettle is black" is false at T[sub]2[/sub].
The meaning of the sentence "the kettle is black" did not change at T[sub]2[/sub]. So why did the truth value of the sentence "the kettle is black" change at T[sub]2[/sub]? Because the material object changed.
If the truth value of a sentence can change without the meaning of that sentence changing then the truth value of that sentence depends on more than just its meaning.
And I honestly don't know how you make the inference you do in the above quote.
Absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head.
It cannot be be the thing in that sense identified by our use of the expression "the kettle" because no single, agreed on thing (matter, particles, hidden states) fits that bill.
What the expression "the kettle" does, changes from use to use.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Sufficient to get a job done though. If I say "put the kettle on" I don't need you to know if that includes the screw in the drawer. I assume you gather my intent. I could probably have just said "tea time!"
If we want an ephemeral, relativist 'truth', then sure we could compare the 'kettle' of any given conversation to the 'black' in that same conversation.
But if we want a 'truth' that gets outside of these conversations... Which use are we going to pick?
Is it? Does "the kettle" include the screw in the drawer or not? Does it include it at T1, but not at T2, or vice versa perhaps? Did you paint the screw. Was it a really dark red that I'd call black?
Yes. For the sake of argument we have fixed the referent of the phrase "the kettle" (and "black", and "red") such that the truth value of "the kettle is black" is unambiguously true at T[sub]1[/sub] and false at T[sub]2[/sub].
The meaning of the sentence didn't change at T[sub]2[/sub] but its truth value did. Therefore, the truth value of the sentence depends on more than just its meaning. It also depends on the material object referred to by the phrase "the kettle".