"What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."

Quoting Pie

"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)?

Or is it a property of a state of affairs, whether conceived as a concrete event (region of space-time) or something more abstract? Which latter might be what many people mean by proposition. What a quagmire!

1 truth-bearing sentence/proposition/fact

2 truth-making event/state of affairs/proposition/fact

Not that we have to acknowledge truth-makers corresponding to truth-bearers. Just flagging up the likely misunderstandings coming down the line.

Could we all just drop "state of affairs" and "proposition" and "fact"? Serious suggestion. Because even the first ends up standing for "sentence". At least with those perhaps disavowing correspondence but prone to having it both ways.

Reply to Pie

I think a distinction needs to be made between these two claims:

1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p"

The issue with the first is that it entails that all propositions exist:

q ? the proposition that p
T(q) ? q is true

1. T(q) ? p
2. T(q) ? ?x(x=q)
3. p ? ?x(x=q)
4. ¬T(q) ? ¬p
5. ¬T(q) ? ?x(x=q)
6. ¬p ? ?x(x=q)
7. ?x(x=q)

This is problematic because it suggests that propositions exist as abstract entities (à la Platonism) which may be unacceptable to some.

Alternatively propositions are expressions, in which case the T-schema only applies when something is expressed, and so it doesn't make sense to talk about "unspoken truths" (unless this is understood as being comparable to "unbuilt houses", i.e. a reference to potential/possibility).

Quoting bongo fury

Or is it a property of a state of affairs, whether conceived as a concrete event (region of space-time) or something more abstract? Which latter might be what many people mean by proposition. What a quagmire!

:up:

It is a quagmire !

Could you say more ?

My first thoughts on the matter of truth is that truth seems to be a human construction. All there really is is reality, things happening and existing. It is when you introduce a human or some sort of human-like observer that we start carving up the world, identifying real things that happen (truth?) and things that don't (falsehoods?). Consider this example: is it true that bachelor's are unmarried? It seems the answer is yes, by definition, but do bachelors even exist in the first place? I might take a radical stance (if it is one) and say bachelors only exist insofar as there are observers of reality that identify a pattern compatible with the bachelor definition. But if the existence of a bachelor is dependent on how the observer carves reality, then it is only true that they are unmarried given that context.

I'm not sure if this is compatible with correspondence or redundancy theory, but I don't think truth is as absolute as most people think, I guess.

Quoting bongo fury

Not that we have to acknowledge truth-makers corresponding to truth-bearers. Just flagging up the likely misunderstandings coming down the line.

You mention one of my concerns, truth-makers, which seem like unnecessary entities.

Quoting bongo fury

Could we all just drop "state of affairs" and "proposition"? Serious suggestion. Because even the former ends up standing for "sentence". With those perhaps disavowing correspondence but prone to having it both ways.

You probably know that I agree. I want things public. Enough with the hidden.

Quoting Michael

The issue with the first is that it entails that all propositions exist:

I'm not 100% comfortable with the move from English to symbolic logic, but your using 'means'
looks pretty good. "P is true" basically means "P" (the "is true" doesn't add anything.) (I guess that's how I understood your #1 in the first place.)

Quoting Pie

one of my concerns, truth-makers, which seem like unnecessary entities.

:up:

Controversial!

Quoting Jerry

My first thoughts on the matter of truth is that truth seems to be a human construction.

In my view, there's some truth in this. I'm reluctant to say that there is truth without assertions. Ignoring rational aliens, it seems that truth is not apart from us.

Quoting Jerry

It is when you introduce a human or some sort of human-like observer that we start carving up the world, identifying real things that happen (truth?) and things that don't (falsehoods?).

One of the problems is this carving-up: the world-carved-up as opposed to the world-not-carved-up. It seems that the raw or uncarved world is just Being, which is basically Nothing (no distinctions make it a ineffable clump). To say anything about it is to carve carve carve.

Quoting Pie

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 ?

p is a proposition. So what this says is that the proposition "the cat is on the mat" is true if it corresponds to some fact about the word, namely the cat being on the mat. I don't think it correct to say that the proposition is the fact. Me writing "the cat is on the mat" isn't the cat being on the mat. The writing isn't the thing being written about.

Quoting Pie

one of my concerns, truth-makers, which seem like unnecessary entities.

In this case, the cat being on the mat is the truth-maker and the proposition "the cat is on the mat" (which can be spoken or written or signed, etc.) is the truth-bearer.

Reply to Michael
I think I am using 'fact' in a biased way (accidentally taking for granted a point of view which is not yet established.) I would 'like' to understand facts as true claims.

I want something like facts to serve as the inputs of inferences.

Quoting Michael

Me writing "the cat is on the mat" isn't the cat being on the mat. The writing isn't the thing being written about.

:up:

I agree that a string of letters is not a cat on a mat.

Quoting Pie

I think I am using 'fact' in a biased way (accidentally taking for granted a point of view which is not yet established.) I would 'like' to understand facts as true claims.

I think it's just a matter of preference whether to call the true proposition "the cat is on the mat" the fact or the cat being on the mat the fact.

You could always re-read the correspondence theory as saying that a proposition is true iff it corresponds to some object/event that exists/happens in the world. It's just a little wordy that way which is why I suspect they opted to use the term "fact" as a shorthand.

Quoting Jerry

I'm not sure if this is compatible with correspondence or redundancy theory, but I don't think truth is as absolute as most people think, I guess.

I'd only say that truth seems grammatically absolute, in a way that I hope to articulate further.

It's like a knight on the chessboard.

Quoting Michael

You could always re-read the correspondence theory as saying that a proposition is true if it corresponds to some object/event that exists/happens in the world.

My issue with this is ....to what does it correspond...if not the reiteration of that which it is supposed to make true ?

"The cat on the mat" is true if the cat is on the mat.

I guess I want to avoid some weird stuff that is and is not language at the same time, some kind of quasi-physical cat-on-the-mat-ness. It's as if we are tempted to say too much, to merely muddy the water....

Quoting Pie

My issue with this is ....to what does it correspond...if not the reiteration of that which it is supposed to make true ?

"The cat on the mat" is true if the cat is on the mat.

I guess I want to avoid some weird stuff that is and is not language at the same time, some kind of quasi-physical cat-on-the-mat-ness. It's as if we are tempted to say too much, to merely muddy the water....

I could just point to the cat on the mat and say that your statement is true because it corresponds to the thing I'm pointing at.

Obviously I have to use the phrase "the cat on the mat" when I'm writing here, but in real life I can perform the action without writing (or saying) "the cat is on the mat".

"What you say is true because it corresponds to that [the thing I point to]".

Quoting Michael

Alternatively propositions are expressions,

Yes please!

Quoting Michael

in which case the T-schema only applies when something is expressed,

So, whenever there is a T-schema expression, at least?

Problem?

Quoting Michael

I could just point to the cat on the mat and say that your statement is true because it corresponds to the thing I'm pointing at.

I agree that you pick a case where correspondence is more plausible, but this is like choosing the little pieces of language that conform to the otherwise broken nomenclature theory.

To what would "truth is correspondence" (if true) correspond ? The concept of truth ? Perhaps. But one could not point.

Quoting Michael

"What you say is true because it corresponds to that [the thing I point to]".

This also takes us into the ineffable, the gestural. I grant that it's probably the intuitive source of the CT.
It deserves credit for what it gets right.

Quoting Agent Smith

If nyet, there really is no point to...anything, oui monsieur?

But that is merely to assume the CT, and to therefore think there's only void and darkness without it.

Qui ?

I do not suggest that nothing is true...only that maybe being true is radically simple thing, like some kind of default intention in communication (but that's not quite it, just exploring.)

Quoting Pie

CT

What that? :chin:

Reply to Agent Smith
The grand old Correspondence Theory (of truth)...

Quoting Pie

But one could not point.

I don't need to be able to point to it for it to be the case, just as I don't need to say "the cat is on the mat" for the cat to be on the mat. Whether or not we can demonstrate correspondence has no bearing on whether or not correspondence obtains.

Quoting Michael

I don't need to be able to point to it for it to be the case, just as I don't need to say "the cat is on the mat" for the cat to be on the mat.

OK, but what is it to be the case ?

To me, it all boils down to P.

P is the case. P is true. P.

Or is there a difference that makes a difference?

Quoting Pie

The grand old Correspondence Theory (of truth)...

:snicker: Oops!

Quoting Pie

OK, but what is it to be the case ?

To me, it all boils down to P.

Yes, but it doesn't boil down to "P". That's the point.

Quoting Michael

Yes, but it doesn't boil down to "P". That's the point.

But surely we don't intend P as 'P.' Else why invent the notation for mention rather than use ?

Nor is 2 + 2 = 4 intended as a fact about numerals rather than numbers.

One might be tempted to talk of the meaning of 'P,' which is fair enough. But we might also consider an equivalence class of intersubstitutable expressions.

Are we forced into talk about something 'behind' our expressions ? Perhaps 'mind' is right there in them and as them (not singly but their relationships.)

Quoting Pie

Are we forced into talk about something 'behind' our expressions ?

A realist would want to. There's the written sentence "the cat is on the mat" and then there is the cat on the mat, which is an animal sitting on some fabric.

Try to correspond with real things or events. Cats, mats and cat-on-mat events. Celebrate your confidence in the correspondence by positing actual entities that are truly called "a cat", "a mat", "a cat-on-mat-event" or are truly related verbally by "is on the".

"The cat's being on the mat" is the controversy. Any such entity?

Sounds a bit straw-manish, admittedly. Can we agree, then?

So. Sentences. Things/events.

Sentences true or false. Things/events corresponding to names or other sentence-parts.

No entities corresponding to whole sentences. No truth-value attaching to things or events that aren't sentences.

I thank you.

Quoting Michael

We see N. I'm in my room, I see lots of things about it but I don't describe them.

Quoting Michael

There's the written sentence "the cat is on the mat" and then there is the cat on the mat, which is an animal sitting on some fabric.

Does this mean there exists [math ] f : \mathbb{E} \to \mathbb{N} [/math] such that f('the cat is on the mat') = the cat's being on the mat ? I take [math ] \mathbb{E} [/math] to be the set of English assertions and [math ] \mathbb{N} [/math] to be the set of non-linguistic reality bits. But what do we ever see of [math] \mathbb{N} [/math] but transformed English assertions ? It's like the thing-in-itself. Is this just an issue with use versus mention ?

It seems that we basically have f('P') = P, so that f removes quotes, transforms mention to use.

Quoting Pie

But what do we ever see of N but transformed English assertions

We see N. I'm in my room, I see lots of things about it but I don't describe them.

But this is back to the ghost story ! Sensations aren't the inputs of inferences. We need claims.

In essence, basic statements are for Popper logical constructs which embrace and include ‘observation statements’, but for methodological reasons he seeks to avoid that terminology, as it suggests that they are derived directly from, and known by, experience (2002: 12, footnote 2), which would conflate them with the “protocol” statements of logical positivism and reintroduce the empiricist idea that certain kinds of experiential reports are incorrigible.
...
Experiences can motivate a decision, and hence an acceptance or a rejection of a statement, but a basic statement cannot be justified by them—no more than by thumping the table.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#BasiStatFalsConv

On an intuitive level, I see the temptation...but I'm also wary of this prelinguistic blob. I think awareness ought to be understood linguistically. The ineffable doesn't get us anywhere. If you, on the other hand, start talking about objects in your room and light hitting your retina...we can all work with that.

Like this:

Statements can be justified only by other statements, and therefore testing comes to an end, not in the establishment of a correlation between propositional content and observable reality, as empiricism would hold, but by means of the conventional, inter-subjective acceptance of the truth of certain basic statements by the research community.

Tentatively warranted and therefore jointly accepted premises.

Here's another theme, appropriate to Pilate not staying for an answer. Is truth important ? Or do we really (only) care about warrant and justification ?

Suppose you are standing in a darkened room, and seem to see a candle ten feet in front of you. I attribute to you the belief that there is a candle ten feet in front of you. And so long as you have no reason to think anything funny is going on, I take you to be justified in that belief, since you can see it. So I take you to be committed to there being a candle ten feet in front of you, and entitled to that commitment: to have a justified belief. Nonetheless, I will not take it that you know that there is a candle ten feet in front of you if I don’t believe that—if, for instance, I, but not you, can see that there is an angled mirror five feet in front of you, and that the candle you see is actually quite close to you, hidden from you by a curtain. My assessment that your justified belief is not true is a way of expressing the fact that under the circumstances described, I am not willing myself to undertake commitment to the claim I attribute to you. Assigning some belief the honorific status of knowledge is important, because in doing that I am classifying it as being of the kind that I think everyone should employ as premises in their own inferences, should appeal to in their own reasoning. These are the beliefs that I take to be eligible to serve as reasons on the basis of which to form further beliefs. For I take it both that any good inference in which they figure as premises is one whose conclusions I should endorse, and I take it that good reasons can be given to believe them, in turn. Thus, these are the beliefs that I take it deserve to spread.
...
Truth is not a concept that has an important explanatory role to play in philosophy. Appearances to the contrary are the result of misunderstanding its distinctive expressive role. The word ‘true’ does indeed let us say things that in many cases we could not say without it. But when we understand what it lets us say, and how it does that, we will see that the very features that make it expressively useful make it completely unsuitable to do the sort of theoretical explanatory work for which philosophers have typically enlisted its aid.

The expression “…is true” looks like a predicate that ascribes a property. If it were, it would be a very special kind of immediately and unconditionally normatively significant property: a kind of “to-be-believed-ness” property. No wonder metaphysicians, ethicists, and especially epistemologists have regarded it with fascination. Nor is its normative weight exclusively of an abstract, disinterested, ethical sort—a high ideal that is a suitable object of selfless commitment by those of good character, lofty aspiration, and sufficient leisure. For, we are assured by the philosophical tradition, the truth of our beliefs is the touchstone and sole possible guarantor of the success of our practical endeavors—including the lowest and most narrowly self-interested. Having beliefs with the special, desirable property of being true is the only reliable way to get what you want—to imbue your desires with the most important and desirable property they can aspire to: being satisfied. So truth is of supreme practical importance.

Besides its central significance for both the most ethereal principles and the most egoistical practices, truth has also seemed to hold the key to our inmost, ownmost nature. For ... we are not merely sentient creatures, but also sapient ones. That is, in addition to consciousness in the sense of having feelings and sensations—awareness in the sense that underwrites a distinction between being awake and asleep—as our mammalian cousins such as cats do, we have states with conceptually articulated contents that can be expressed in sentences. We can believe that the international monetary system needs to be reformed and desire that it be reformed. These are the propositional attitudes that can constitute knowledge. And the standard way to understand the propositional contents that distinguish these states from the images and raw feels that are the contents of merely sentient states is that they can be assessed as to their truth. The meaning of a declarative sentence, expressing the content of a possible belief (or desire, or intention), consists in the circumstances under which it would be true. To grasp or understand that meaning or content just is to know its truth conditions: how the world would have to be for it to be true. So the sort of mindedness that distinguishes us from the beasts of the field—the sapience that gives our species its very name—consists in the relations we stand in to the very special property of truth: that we can think things that could be true, desire and intend that they be true. Take away that relationship to truth and you take away our sapience, relegate us to the cognitive torpor of mere sentience. This sapience- constituting directedness at truth is the essence and the motor of our ascent out of that primeval sea into the broad highlands of thought. Philosophical concern with us, our nature and our spirit, is philosophical concern with truth.

This familiar philosophical scene, with truth at center-stage and in the leading role, is no doubt uplifting and inspiring. But I think it is deeply confused and almost totally wrong. Consider to begin with the idea that truth is the property of beliefs that conduces to the success of practical projects based on those beliefs. This thought is so deeply entrenched that some pragmatists have even sought to define truth as the success-producing property of beliefs. But even those not inclined to endorse such an order of definition have felt free to appeal to the intimate connection between the truth of beliefs and the satisfaction of desires for other philosophical projects—for instance when scientific realists argue that the at least approximate truth of our scientific theories is the only possible explanation for the practical success of our technologies: the extent to which they provide powerful instruments for getting what we want (at least, for some kinds of things we want).

The idea is that it is the truth of my belief that there are cookies in the cupboard that explains the fulfillment of my desire for cookies. This is an intuitively compelling thought, but we need to be careful with it. The truth of that belief will not lead to satisfaction of my desire in the context of the collateral false belief that the cupboard is in the kitchen, rather than in the pantry. And, to vary the example, the false belief that one can tan leather by boiling it with birch-bark will result in practical success if it is combined with the false collateral belief that the oak in front of me is really a birch. So the practical utility of a belief’s being true is wholly hostage to the truth or falsity of the collateral beliefs with which it is combined.

Well then, perhaps one should only talk about the truth of a whole set of beliefs—indeed, of all one’s beliefs. The requirement that we banish all error from our beliefs is a tall order, and probably not very realistic. But surely that would reliably produce successful, desire-satisfying actions? Not really. For the effects of collateral ignorance are just as bad as those of collateral error. If I am unaware that wet weather has swelled the cupboard door so that it cannot be opened, all my true beliefs about the location of the cookies and of the cupboard will be of no practical avail. But banishing ignorance as well as error seems over the top: is truth really only of practical use to the omniscient?

from "Why Truth is not Important in Philosophy"
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts%20Mark%201%20p.html

I think the correspondence theory's thesis "'p' is true iff p is the case" only makes sense understood as a grammatical remark. It'd state something like you can't say "'p' is true" and "'p' is not the case" simultaneously.

There seems to be a logical link between "being true", "being a fact", "being asserted" and "being believed". If I assert p, then I'm forced to say that p is true, that p is a fact, and that I believe that p. All these statements are indissociable from the first person, and that's the whole thing the correspondence theory's formulation points to.

I can hardly understand the metaphysical thesis that there is in the world, beyond our practices, a brute fact that makes a statement true.

This might be more relevant to the latest discussion, from the same source:

If you don’t understand the sentence “The surgeon performed a cholecystectomy,” I can explain it to you by telling you that it is true just in case the surgeon removed the patient’s gall bladder. And we can say more general things, such as: Any claim of the form ~p is true just in case p is not true. But it would be a mistake to infer from this sort of appeal to truth conditions to express propositional contents that one can explain what propositional contents are by appeal to the conditions under which sentences are true. That would be a possible order of explanation only if one can make sense of the notion of truth prior to and independently of making sense of the notion of propositional content. And there is good reason to think that that cannot be done.

He goes on to endorse the prosentential account.

According to the prosentential theory of truth, whenever a referring expression (for example, a definite description or a quote-name) is joined to the truth predicate, the resulting statement contains no more content than the sentence(s) picked out by the referring expression. To assert that a sentence is true is simply to assert or reassert that sentence; it is not to ascribe the property of truth to that sentence.

This is an appealing approach if it can be made to work.

Quoting Almagro

I can hardly understand the metaphysical thesis that there is in the world, beyond our practices, a brute fact that makes a statement true.

:up:

I also think it'd be best to avoid this notion, precisely because it's so unclear. The world is (or perhaps ought to be described in terms of ) all that is the case, as a system of facts.

It's very tempting to try to talk about (invent! using talk ) something that can't be talked about.

Quoting Almagro

All these statements are indissociable from the first person, and that's the whole thing the correspondence theory's formulation points to.

We should perhaps allow that a community can jointly declare or endorse P. So the point may more about language than the first-person, though of course 'I claim P' or 'I think P' plays a central role epistemologically.

Quoting Pie

and N to be the set of non-linguistic reality bits.

States, then? States of affairs?

Quoting Pie

Is this just an issue with use versus mention ?

"Just"???

Quoting bongo fury

States, then? States of affairs?

I think [math] \mathbb{N} [/math] is the wrong way to go. I think we agree ?

Quoting bongo fury

"Just"???

You are cryptic. I like terse, but please give me a little more to decipher.

Quoting bongo fury

No entities corresponding to whole sentences. No truth-value attaching to things or events that aren't sentences.

That sounds correct.

It's hard to disallow meanings of sentences in ordinary conversation, but this is perhaps more conflation of P with 'P'. The 'meaning' of 'P' just is P. Something like that maybe.

Reply to Pie

Quoting bongo fury

Could we all just drop "state of affairs" and "proposition"? Serious suggestion. Because even the former ends up standing for "sentence".

Ambiguously.

Not that you said "states". Events? Less ambiguous.

Reply to Almagro

Quoting Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters

Some of the trouble traces back to Alfred Tarski's unfortunate suggestion that the formula " 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white" commits us to a correspondence theory of truth. Actually it leaves us free to adopt any theory (correspondence, coherence, or other) that gives " 'Snow is white' is true" and "snow is white" the same truth-value.

Quoting Pie

I think N is the wrong way to go. I think we agree ?

Yes if N is a totality of corresponding facts. No if it's a totality of things that I ought to tidy. But they correspond merely to sentence-parts.

Quoting bongo fury

Yes if N is a totality of corresponding facts.

So maybe we agree (if we can find a congruent terminology) that there's just true claims ? We are both minimalist on this issue ? Prosentential perhaps ?

Quoting Pie

there's just true claims ?

Yes. No corresponding relations or properties.

Quoting bongo fury

Yes. No corresponding relations or properties.

:up:

Quoting Pie

Is truth important ?

If you want to say meaning is found in truth conditions, yes.

Quoting Tate

If you want to say meaning is found in truth conditions, yes.

Go on.

The essay explores that theme, tries to give it its due. I'm still making up my mind.

I think maybe warranted beliefs are what's important. I'm not sure truth plays much of a role. But I'm willing to be corrected.

Quoting Pie

I think maybe warranted beliefs are what's important. I'm not sure truth plays much of a role. But I'm willing to be corrected.

I will die if I am warranted in believing that I will be decapitated.
I will die if it is true that I will be decapitated.

I think there's a clear difference here. And I think it's truth, not warranted belief, that is important in this case.

Quoting Michael

I think there's a clear difference here. And I think it's truth, not warranted belief, that is important in this case.

Well now, that's not what I had in mind, but I guess ?

Note that the second statement is easily rewritten as 'I will die, if I am decapitated.'

I note also that all I meant was that the best we can do is make sure our beliefs are warranted. We seem forced to find out whether they turn out to be true the hard way.

Quoting Pie

you want to say meaning is found in truth conditions, yes.
— Tate

Go on.

The essay explores that theme, tries to give it its due. I'm still making up my mind.

I think maybe warranted beliefs are what's important. I'm not sure truth plays much of a role. But I'm willing to be corrected.

I think the truth conditions idea is meant to be a work around for the failure of correspondence. You know the meaning of P if you know when it's true.

Quoting Pie

I think maybe warranted beliefs are what's important

Important for what?

Quoting Tate

You know the meaning of P if you know when it's true.

If you mean if you know what would make it true, then that seems (tentatively) right.

Quoting Tate

Important for what?

It seems philosophers can only manage to make sure their beliefs are warranted, justified.

--How can I have true beliefs ?
--Well, I guess (?) make sure your beliefs are warranted and justified.
--So a warranted belief is more likely to be true ?
--I guess so. Yeah.

Quoting Pie

-How can I have true beliefs ?

Skeptics will often say things like they want to believe as many truth things and as few false things as possible. Easier said than done. Whatever its limitations, I am happy for most quotidian affairs to be settled by correspondence. As it happens, Pilate's question was needlessly abstract and seems to construct 'truth' as a mystical property. As Simon Blackburn reminds us, the question for Pilate was, is Jesus starting an insurrection? This can be investigated. No need to calibrate the notion of truth. The best we can do is test everyday claims. Truth is not a property that all true propositions have in common. In the end what we call true about many matters will come down to presuppositions and value systems and often be at odds with other's presuppositions and value systems.

Quoting Pie

make sure your beliefs are warranted and justified.

Rorty says that we know nothing of truth 'out there' but we can only justify beliefs. I imagine there are better and worse methods to go about doing this, right? Do you have any simple thoughts for a non-philosopher?

Quoting Pie

You know the meaning of P if you know when it's true.
— Tate

If you mean if you know what would make it true, then that seems (tentatively) right.

Pretty much.

Quoting Pie

Important for what?
— Tate

It seems philosophers can only manage to make sure their beliefs are warranted, justified.

You may be warranted to believe P, but that doesn't say anything about the probability of P being true.

Quoting Tom Storm

Easier said than done.

:up:

Quoting Tom Storm

As it happens, Pilate's question was needlessly abstract and seems to construct 'truth' as a mystical property.

Bacon writing it adds even more complexity, because it's plausible that Bacon identified with Pilate and understood Pilate to be mocking some grandiose reification. "Truths maybe, but Truth ? Nevermind."

Quoting Tom Storm

the question for Pilate was, is Jesus starting an insurrection? This can be investigated. No need to calibrate the notion of truth. The best we can do is test everyday claims. Truth is not a property that all true propositions have in common.

That seems right to me. Just as there is no it that rains when it's raining, ...

Quoting Tom Storm

I imagine there are better and worse methods to go about doing this, right? Do you have any simple thoughts for a non-philosopher?

I don't think I can tell you anything you don't know. If you happen to have not studied statistics, understanding controlled experiments, hypothesis testing, and fitting models to data seems as valuable to me as anything else.

Quoting Tate

You may be warranted to believe P, but that doesn't say anything about the probability of P being true.

Is this so clear ? Why then do we value warrant ?

Quoting Pie

Why then do we value warrant ?

Good question. Think about people with OCD who have to recheck the same fact over and over. Something has gone wrong with the process of obtaining knowledge. The confidence one is supposed to get from justification isn't sticking.

I actually have a touch of that, and it's a strength in some situations. I recheck things others wouldn't, and every now and then discover problems others miss. They're too confident.

Confidence does speed things up, though. If you're running through the jungle trying to escape a saber toothed tiger, you need to react quickly to the justifications you're receiving.

I don't know, you're probably right. If you're justified, you may be more likely to be right.

I would expect you to be a knowledge externalist, though.

Quoting Pie

How can I have true beliefs ?

For some reason this question contextualizes truth better for me. When we say things like "I want to know what's true", I feel like we mistakenly treat truth as if it's something out there that we can attain. When really, all that's out there is reality, what is, and when we seek truth, we're simply looking for patterns existing in reality. What we can say of truth though, is when it applies to our mind. For example, beliefs can be true or false, like the belief that "the sky is blue", and their truth value is dependent upon whether the content of the belief is an actual pattern in reality. If I believe the sky is blue, and the sky really is blue, then my belief is true, but under my understanding, that the sky is blue isn't really a truth in and of itself. It simply is.

I guess this is just a roundabout way of accepting the correspondence theory of truth, but I think the key idea is that truth isn't a fundamental "thing", like an abstract object that we discover. It simply describes whether our mental models correctly describe reality.

Quoting Tom Storm

Skeptics will often say things like they want to believe as many truth things and as few false things as possible.

Isn't that just a Dillahunty saying? Although I suppose the sentiment is typical of skeptics.

Quoting Jerry

I suppose the sentiment is typical of skeptics.

I think so. I am a skeptic. I don't generally say this, however.

Quoting Michael

1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p"

If you have an understanding of the state under which p is true, then what more could you want in order to have the meaning of p? (Davidson)


Quoting Michael

1. T(q) ? p

You are going to get into all sorts of trouble by treating truth as a first-order predicate.

Quoting Tate

Confidence does speed things up, though. If you're running through the jungle trying to escape a saber toothed tiger, you need to react quickly to the justifications you're receiving.

:up:
Quoting Tate

I don't know, you're probably right. If you're justified, you may be more likely to be right.

I lean that way, though it might be hard to formalize. Stats might be an exception. P-values roughly measure the probability of chance being responsible for what looks like non-chance.

Quoting Tate

I would expect you to be a knowledge externalist, though.

Still working it out, but I'm liking a normative approach to conceptuality. How are we responsible for our claims about objects in our world ? The object has a 'say' in this.

Quoting Banno

You are going to get into all sorts of trouble by treating truth as a first-order predicate.

T(q) ? p is the same as “p” is true iff p which is the T-schema which you have previously said is the correct account of truth.

Quoting Pie

This is a thorny issue...

I'm not so sure. I suspect it's actually pretty simple, if folk don't confuse themselves. Treat T-sentences as a definition of "...is true" and you won't go far wrong.

Quoting Jerry

For example, beliefs can be true or false, like the belief that "the sky is blue", and their truth value is dependent upon whether the content of the belief is an actual pattern in reality.

For me, it's hard not to simplify this into : "the sky is blue" is true if and only if the sky is blue. The temptation is to say more, to explain truth, but it tends to come out as the same tune in another key.

Quoting Jerry

I guess this is just a roundabout way of accepting the correspondence theory of truth, but I think the key idea is that truth isn't a fundamental "thing", like an abstract object that we discover. It simply describes whether our mental models correctly describe reality.

I think the deflationary/redundancy view which I endorse is a leaner, cleaner version of correspondence.
Talk of mental models and representation in general seems to want to put two things together side by side, but it seems that only the thing on our side is intelligible. How does 'the sky is blue' match anything ? The language and the world are one, you might say. But it'd make sense to evolve a language like that. (I don't mean that letters or sounds are the same as the world but that meaning is something like the world-for-us, though it's probably safer to just endorse the redundancy theory of truth.)

Quoting Banno

I'm not so sure. I suspect it's actually pretty simple, if folk don't confuse themselves. Treat T-sentences as a definition of "...is true" and you won't go far wrong.

:up:

I think we should make it simple in just way (or close enough.)

Quoting Michael

T(q) ? p is the same as “p” is true iff p which is the T-schema which you have previously said is the correct account of truth.

I'm not sure of that. Your version hides the disquotation in a seperate line. 'q' becomes explicitly the name of a sentence, raising the complex issue of individuating that sentence. Types, tokens, and so on. The quotes make it clear that what is true is an utterance, in a specific circumstance - a quote.

Quoting Pie

I think we should make it simple in just way (or close enough.)

That's what this thread might do, for some.

Quoting Banno

The quotes make it clear that what is true is an utterance, in a specific circumstance - a quote.

I think the quotes make it clear that what is true is a proposition. Whether or not a proposition is an utterance is open to debate which the rest of my post explains.

Quoting Banno

That's what this thread might do, for some.

:up:

Quoting Michael

I think the quotes make it clear that what is true is a proposition.

I will go with Davidson and opt for utterance rather than proposition. I understand what an utterance is, not so much a disembodied proposition, floating between "it's raining", "il pluet" and "Sta piovendo"

Quoting Banno

will go with Davidson and opt for utterance

My impression was that he used sentences, not utterances. An utterance is the actual sounds or marks used in communication. A sentence is a formal thing. Any number of utterances can convey the same sentence.

Reply to Tate OK, p is a sentence. "p" is an utterance.

Reply to Banno You're using your own definition, then.

Reply to Tate Radical interpretation does not deal in utterances?

Quoting Banno

Radical interpretation does not deal in utterances?

I don't think so. Sentences. Tarski used sentences.

Reply to Tate Doesn't look right. What is interpreted is a particular utterance, made by a specific speaker, at a given time, in a certain situation. Hence the context that permits triangulation.

Reply to Banno
Radical interpretation, per the SEP:

"So, for example, when the speaker with whom we are engaged uses a certain sequence of sounds repeatedly in the presence of what we believe to be a rabbit, we can, as a preliminary hypothesis, interpret those sounds as utterances about rabbits or about some particular rabbit. Once we have arrived at a preliminary assignment of meanings for a significant body of utterances, we can test our assignments against further linguistic behaviour on the part of the speaker,".

This is about utterances, yes, but we haven't yet arrived at issues of truth. For that we move on to sentences.

Reply to Tate TO get back to the point at hand, do you think that

Quoting Michael

T(q) ? p

is a T-sentence, as Michale claims?

I think there are important differences. You?

Reply to Banno
For Tarski, both the quoted and disquoted portions are sentences. The issue of utterances and propositions doesn't come up.

The T-schema is used in other ways, though. In redundancy, we're imagining someone making an assertion, so uttering a sentence. Whether we want to also say they're expressing a proposition by uttering a sentence isn't relevant to the point.

The T-schema has also been used as a rendering of correspondence theory. It just depends on how we want to read it. I gather you're leaning toward correspondence theory.

Reply to Tate But do you think

T(q) ? p

where
Quoting Michael

q ? the proposition that p

is the same as

"p" is true ? p

And if so, how, and if not, why?

Seems to me the problem stems from treating propositions as individuals.

As is obvious, @Pie wants to know why (the jesting) Pilate didn't wait for an answer to the question "Quid est veritas?" he had posed to Jesus? He was on the right track, Pilate was!

Res, non verba!

Are we in sophist territory? It's baffling, all this.

Reply to Banno

Quoting Banno

q ? the proposition that p
— Michael
is the same as
"p" is true ? p
And if so, how, and if not, why?

If you're interpreting the t-sentence rule as a rendering of correspondence theory, then yes, the quoted part is a truth bearer, probably a proposition, and the disquoted part is a truth maker.

It just depends on how you want to read it.

Quoting Banno

Seems to me the problem stems from treating propositions as individuals.

Why is that problematic?

[quote=Tate]truth bearer[/quote]

Agent Smith notes that down for future reference! Has a religious subtext to it which I find fascinating (re messengers of God).

Reply to Banno I don't see what difference it makes. In The Semantic Conception of Truth, Tarski offers this example:

The sentence "snow is white" is true if, and only if, snow is white.

If the sentence "snow is white" is true then the sentence "snow is white" exists. Therefore, given the biconditional, if snow is white then the sentence "snow is white" exists.

I suppose you could amend it to:

If the sentence "snow is white" exists then it is true iff snow is white.

?q: T(q) ? p

Then the conclusion to the argument I gave at the start of this discussion is the tautology:

?q: ?x(x=q)

Quoting Tate

and the disquoted part is a truth maker.

Not so fast. The sentence in the second part is a truth maker? Or it picks out a truth maker?

Quoting Tate

Seems to me the problem stems from treating propositions as individuals.
— Banno

Why is that problematic?

How is it clear? Is such an individual: truth-bearing sentence, truth-making event or relation, or something in between, or (as so often carelessly implied) all at once.

Quoting Michael

Tarski offers this example:

The sentence "snow is white" is true if, and only if, snow is white.

Quite. "Sentence" is fine. Drop "proposition". (Everyone!) If not why not?

Quoting bongo fury

and the disquoted part is a truth maker.
— Tate

Not so fast. The sentence in the second part is a truth maker? Or it picks out a truth maker?

Yes. :razz: My point was that you need to look for how an author is using the t-sentence rule. Use varies.

Quoting bongo fury

Seems to me the problem stems from treating propositions as individuals.
— Banno

Why is that problematic?
— Tate

How is it clear? Is such an individual: truth-bearing sentence, truth-making event, or something in between, or (as so often carelessly insinuated) all at once.

Again, look to use. Propositions are usually the content of uttered sentences, but nothing stops people from using "proposition" to mean pizza.


Quoting bongo fury

Tarski offers this example:

The sentence "snow is white" is true if, and only if, snow is white.
— Michael

Quite. "Sentence" is fine. Drop "proposition". If not why not?

Tarski doesn't deal in propositions. It's just sentences from two different languages, one that has a truth predicate and one that doesn't. It's not a definition of truth.

Quoting Tate

Tarski doesn't deal in propositions. It's just sentences from two different languages, one that has a truth predicate and one that doesn't. It's not a definition of truth.

He does provide a definition of truth in The Semantic Conception of Truth:

Hence we arrive at a definition of truth and falsehood simply by saying that a sentence is true if it is satisfied by all objects, and false otherwise.

Quoting Michael

He does provide a definition of truth in The Semantic Conception of Truth:

Hence we arrive at a definition of truth and falsehood simply by saying that a sentence is true if it is satisfied by all objects, and false otherwise.

I think he eventually admitted that it's not a definition. Since Frege, the standard view is that truth can't be defined. It's too primitive.

Quoting Pie

"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)?

Both, because propositions are in fact a class of sentences.

Quoting Olivier5

propositions are in fact a class of sentences.

Sure. But a sentence is already a class: of tokens, or copies. So you don't need another name for the more inclusive class.

Allowing translations into the class won't matter at all if they are parsed and interpreted the same. It's no different to letting symbols stand for the sentence-parts.

If you want a proposition to be a class of differently parsed paraphrases, then, why? And what? Non-linguistic? Abstract? Timeless?

Quoting bongo fury

Non-linguistic? Abstract? Timeless?

Meh... Why would propositions be timeless? By definition, someone needs to actually propose a proposition and one can't do that outside of time.

And if a proposition is non-linguistic, what does it say?

Quoting Olivier5

Meh... Why would propositions be timeless?

You said

Quoting Olivier5

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)?
— Pie

Both, because propositions are in fact a class of sentences.

Reply to bongo fury I dispute the point that propositions are nonlinguistic and timeless entities. To my mind, they are just a certain type of sentences.

Reply to Olivier5 Glad to hear it.

Then why say "both"?

Quoting Tate

My point was that you need to look for how an author is using the t-sentence rule. Use varies.

I was asking how you were trying to use it. Whether

Quoting Tate

the disquoted part

referred to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3.

Quoting bongo fury

I was asking how you were trying to use it. Whether

the disquoted part
— Tate

refers to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3.

I wasn't trying to use it. I took Banno to be asking if we should interpret the quotes as signaling a specific act of assertion. My answer was that you can do that, you just need to explain that to the reader.

Quoting Olivier5

Both, because propositions are in fact a class of sentences.

Or perhaps neither ? We deny that truth is a property. "P is true" is a fancy/emphatic version of "P."

Quoting Pie

We deny that truth is a property.

Deflationists don't deny that truth is a property, btw.

Quoting bongo fury

Then why say "both"?

I meant that if propositions are sentences, then truth is a property of propositions, and hence a property of certain sentences.

Quoting Olivier5

I dispute the point that propositions are nonlinguistic and timeless entities.

:up:

We should perhaps acknowledge a Derridean 'iterabilty' at work, which is what suggests 'timeless' to earlier theorist (there's a certain time-independence, since old books remain legible, we can quote Tarski in a new context,...)

‘Iterability’ explains that Derrida is concerned with the logical possibility — not merely the physical opportunity — for a written text to remain readable when the absence of the sender or the addressee is no longer a mode of presence but a radical or absolute absence. He sees the possibility of it functioning again beyond (or in the absence of) the ‘living present’ of its context of production or its empirically determined destination as part of what it is to be a written mark. We can thus propose this ‘law of writing’: a mark not structurally readable — iterable — beyond the death of the empirically determinable producer and receiver would not be writing.

https://academic.oup.com/book/377/chapter-abstract/135193384?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

Quoting Pie

We deny that truth is a property.

We being?

Reply to Tate
You may be right, but I don't think I'm that wrong.

Philosophers looking for some underlying nature of some truth property that is attributed with the use of the expression ‘true’ are bound to be frustrated, the deflationist says, because they are looking for something that isn’t there.
...
The suggestion that there is no truth property at all is advanced by some philosophers in the deflationary camp; we will look at some examples below. What makes this position difficult to sustain is that ‘is true’ is grammatically speaking a predicate much like ‘is metal’. If one assumes that grammatical predicates such as ‘is metal’ express properties, then, prima facie, the same would seem to go for ‘is true.’ This point is not decisive, however. For one thing, it might be possible to distinguish the grammatical form of claims containing ‘is true’ from their logical form; at the level of logical form, it might be, as prosententialists maintain, that ‘is true’ is not a predicate.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

Quoting Pie

a certain time-independence

Like a piece of wood can have a certain permanence and durability, a sentence can remain known and meaningful over time. But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time". They are just durable, for a while.

Quoting bongo fury

But a sentence is already a class: of tokens, or copies. So you don't need another name for the more inclusive class.

:up:

The Rust language dereferences pointers automatically. I think we humans are pretty good at doing that too.

Reply to Pie

I definitely need that explained.

I just meant that we can still drop "proposition".

Quoting bongo fury

I definitely need that explained.

This is pretty good.

In computer science, a pointer is an object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer references a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as dereferencing the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page.

Quoting/mentioning is something like pointing at sentence-as-meant. Deferencing is like quote-stripping, 'activating' the code.

Quoting bongo fury

I just meant that we can still drop "proposition".

:up:

I probably just muddied the water by mentioning pointers.

Quoting Olivier5

Like a piece of wood can have a certain permanence and durability, a sentence can remain known and meaningful over time. But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time". They are just durable, for a while.

:up:

I agree. They seem to have meaning only as long as there are normative creatures with a use for them...as code as opposed to burning books to stay warm.

Quoting Olivier5

But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time".

Turing machines have a 'potentially infinite' tape. This just means that we don't build in any limits. I think there is a similar open-ended-ness in play.

Quoting Olivier5

We being?

I can't remember the context. Presumably it's 'we especially rational and charming people who agree with @Pie'...

Quoting Pie

I think we humans are pretty good at doing that too.

Let's see...

Quoting Tate

I wasn't trying to use it. I took Banno to be asking if we should interpret the quotes as signaling a specific act of assertion. My answer was that you can do that, you just need to explain that to the reader.

Ok so you were talking mainly about the first half of the biconditional. Even so, did

Quoting Tate

the disquoted part

refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?

Reply to bongo fury
Maybe not then.

Quoting bongo fury

refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?

You have to specify the context in which you're using the T-sentence rule. Is it Tarski? Redundancy? Are you try to make into correspondence theory?

The answer to your question will vary depending on how you answer that.

Quoting Tate

You have to specify the context in which you're using the T-sentence rule. Is it Tarski? Redundancy? Are you try to make into correspondence theory?

Er,

Quoting Tate

If you're interpreting the t-sentence rule as a rendering of correspondence theory, then

Now then, in that context, your context, did

Quoting Tate

the disquoted part

refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?

Quoting Pie

Presumably it's 'we especially rational and charming people who agree with Pie'...

So it was a regal we, fair enough.

I personally see truth as a property of certain sentences and other symbolic representations of reality, the property of having a good enough fit with said reality, as far as we can tell.

Quoting Pie

there is a similar open-ended-ness in play.

The same applies to many objects, including material ones.

Quoting Olivier5

I personally see truth as a property of certain sentences and other symbolic representations of reality, the property of having a good enough fit with said reality, as far as we can tell.

That view is tempting, but I can't make sense of the comparison, of the fit. Only one side is intelligible.

We clearly aren't fitting strings of letter to reality but the 'meaning' of the utterance. Yet the 'meaning' is just the more or less tentatively embraced 'structure of reality.' It's as if world-as-speakable and language are one, but that's a tautology...(?)

How do you make sense of fit ? Do you see a problem ?

Quoting Olivier5

The same applies to many objects, including material ones.

:up:

Quoting bongo fury

refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?

It would be some state of the world.

Quoting Pie

Yet the 'meaning' is just the more or less tentatively embraced 'structure of reality.'

The meaning of a proposition remains a representation of reality, at least an attempt at it. It's not the reality it tries to depict. It is true to the extent that it represents perceivable reality in an accurate manner.

Quoting Tate

It would be some state of the world.

What would? What you're calling "the disquoted part"?

Some state of the world is a disquoted part? Part of what? Part of the world?

So "part" didn't mean "part of the T schema"?

Quoting Olivier5

The meaning of a proposition remains a representation of reality, at least an attempt at it. It's not the reality it tries to depict.

My question is: how does (the meaning of ) a true statement depict reality ? What is this representational, optical metaphor doing or trying to do ?

Quoting bongo fury

What would? What you're calling "the disquoted part"?

Some state of the world is a disquoted part? Part of what? Part of the world?

So "part" didn't mean "part of the T schema"?

This is Aristotle's formulation of the correspondence theory of truth:

"To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true."


This is the t-sentence rule:

"P" is true IFF P.

If you wanted the t-sentence to express correspondence theory, how would you work it out? I'd say the quoted part is some specific act of assertion, and the disquoted part is a state of affairs that corresponds to the assertion.

Quoting Pie

My question is: how does (the meaning of ) a true statement depict reality ? What is this representational, optical metaphor doing or trying to do ?

I seem to recall, someone had a theory about that.

Quoting bongo fury

I seem to recall, someone had a theory about that.

:up:

Which one, right ?

Rorty was maybe the first analytic philosopher I got into...bad influence, right ? Of course he challenged (as you prob. know) the 'mirror' or lens' or 'truth-o-scope' framework generally. Words are just paws for coping.

I hope this is not too tangential. I think it applies to the implicit ocular metaphor in the correspondence theory (languagemeaning as picture to be held up and check for congruence with ...nonlanguage reality? 'The Absolute In Itself' ?

[quote=Hegel, from Intro to Phen]
It is natural to suppose that, before philosophy enters upon its subject proper — namely, the actual knowledge of what truly is — it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. The apprehension seems legitimate, on the one hand that there may be various kinds of knowledge, among which one might be better adapted than another for the attainment of our purpose — and thus a wrong choice is possible: on the other hand again that, since knowing is a faculty of a definite kind and with a determinate range, without the more precise determination of its nature and limits we might take hold on clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth.

This apprehensiveness is sure to pass even into the conviction that the whole enterprise which sets out to secure for consciousness by means of knowledge what exists per se, is in its very nature absurd; and that between knowledge and the Absolute there lies a boundary which completely cuts off the one from the other. For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reality, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process, and has in view, a moulding and alteration of it. Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument which we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through which the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium. In either case we employ a means which immediately brings about the very opposite of its own end; or, rather, the absurdity lies in making use of any means at all. It seems indeed open to us to find in the knowledge of the way in which the instrument operates, a remedy for this parlous state; for thereby it becomes possible to remove from the result the part which, in our idea of the Absolute received through that instrument, belongs to the instrument, and thus to get the truth in its purity. But this improvement would, as a matter of fact, only bring us back to the point where we were before. If we take away again from a definitely formed thing that which the instrument has done in the shaping of it, then the thing (in this case the Absolute) stands before us once more just as it was previous to all this trouble, which, as we now see, was superfluous. ...
Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error. As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth. It starts with ideas of knowledge as an instrument, and as a medium; and presupposes a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge. More especially it takes for granted that the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real; in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true — a position which, while calling itself fear of error, makes itself known rather as fear of the truth.
[/quote]

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phintro.htm

Quoting Tate

I'd say the quoted part is some specific act of assertion, and the disquoted part is a state of affairs that corresponds to the assertion.

Still? You're still saying the disquoted part of a sentence is a disquoted part of the world, whatever that means?

Quoting bongo fury

Still? You're still saying the disquoted part of a sentence is a disquoted part of the world, whatever that means?

Lol. I'm not sure why this seems mysterious to you. I don't think anyone is well advised to use the t-sentence rule as correspondence theory, but it happens. If that boggles you, just ignore them.

Quoting Pie

Which one, right ?

Might be the day before you came here that everyone was quoting

the big W:
3.1431 The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we imagine one composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books) instead of written signs. Then the spatial arrangement of these things will express the sense of the proposition.

at each other.

Reply to bongo fury
Does he mean reading the furniture in a room ?

This is one of my favorites:

Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign.

Reply to Pie :ok: haha I get it now

Quoting Pie

What is this representational, optical metaphor doing or trying to do ?

If you didn't know how it's done, you couldn't write a meaningful sentence on TPF, and since you clearly can write a meaningful sentence, I will assume you know how it is done. If you want a detailed analysis, you might wish to read about basic linguistics, eg Saussure, or I suppose Chomsky. I read that the recent progresses in automatic translation were based on modern linguistics à la Chomsky, with its concept of a universal grammar.

Reply to Olivier5
I know how to write. I'm not just making weird stuff up, friend. I'm far the first to gripe about the mysteries of the correspondence theory of truth. I'm just asking how you navigate or tolerate them (the traditional criticisms, and the one in particular that I tried to articulate.)

Quoting Tate

I'd say the quoted part is [about] some specific act of assertion, and the disquoted part is [about] a state of affairs that corresponds to the assertion.

Is this what you meant?

Reply to bongo fury OK, hold up. Tell me what you think correspondence theory says.

Reply to Tate

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Reply to bongo fury
Love that poem.

Quoting bongo fury

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

What?

Reply to Tate
I think his joke is that the correspondence theory doesn't make sense, so it's like answering 'the' question to present it so that it does.


What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48410/days-56d229a0c0c33

Ah, thanks for the indulgence but no, it was just, why should I answer yours if you won't answer mine.

I've only been arguing for avoiding the perennial equivocation re

Quoting bongo fury

1 truth-bearing sentence/proposition

2 truth-making event/state of affairs/proposition

Reply to Tate
How's this ? The meaning of the assertion, the sentence in use, seems to simply be the world(-as-understood). If we jettison apparent nonsense like the world-in-itself...the world is just that which is the case. To me this is not correspondence. There's just use/mention. 'P' is a string of letters. P is piece of a world, a truth (or an attempted truthery.)

Quoting bongo fury

Ah, thanks for the indulgence but no, it was just, why should I answer yours if you won't answer mine.

Yea, I was just trying to figure out what the hell you're asking.

Quoting Pie

How's this ? The meaning of the assertion, the sentence in use, seems to simply be the world(-as-understood). If we jettison apparent nonsense like the world-in-itself...the world is just that which is the case. To me this is not correspondence. There's just use/mention. 'P' is a string of letters. P is piece of a world, a truth (or an attempted truthery.)

As I've said, you can do whatever you want.

Quoting Tate

As I've said, you can do whatever you want.

Isn't the point discussion ?

Quoting Pie

Isn't the point discussion ?

Sure. My point is: you can do whatever you want.

*flees over the field*

Quoting Olivier5

you might wish to read about basic linguistics, eg Saussure,

Saussure is one of my favorite thinkers. Good recommendation ! But bad social gesture.

Quoting Pie

There's just use/mention. 'P' is a string of letters. P is piece of a world, a truth (or an attempted truthery.)

Is this my fault? Have I lowered the tone?

It doesn't seem to make any sense. Are you joking?

It's not just me who thinks the correspondence theory is pretty close to being deflationary.

The correspondence theory is often traced back to Aristotle’s well-known definition of truth (Metaphysics 1011b25): “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”—but virtually identical formulations can be found in Plato (Cratylus 385b2, Sophist 263b). It is noteworthy that this definition does not highlight the basic correspondence intuition. Although it does allude to a relation (saying something of something) to reality (what is), the relation is not made very explicit, and there is no specification of what on the part of reality is responsible for the truth of a saying. As such, the definition offers a muted, relatively minimal version of a correspondence theory. (For this reason it has also been claimed as a precursor of deflationary theories of truth.)

The disaster kicks in here ?

[quote]
The metaphysical version presented by Thomas Aquinas is the best known: “Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus” (Truth is the equation of thing and intellect), which he restates as: “A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality”

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/

Quoting bongo fury

It doesn't seem to make any sense. Are you joking?

Joking and not joking. If the world is all that is the case, a truth is a piece of the world.

I'm questioning the supposed gap between the meaning of a true assertion and the world it is true of.

Reply to bongo fury

Waxing phenomenological, I'd say that we, our world, and our language are fused.

We are being-in-the-world-with-others-in-language.

Reply to Pie

Ok. Will you be getting back to waxing analytical any time soon?

Reply to bongo fury
Sure. But I'm a golden dye-job with dirty continental roots.

Reply to bongo fury
I've tended to read the analytical blokes who've integrated the continentals. To me it's mostly different styles, different background lingo...but similar points.

I think this was Hegel's point.

...a correspondence theory of truth must inevitably lead into skepticism about the external world, because the required correspondence between our thoughts and reality is not ascertainable. Ever since Berkeley’s attack on the representational theory of the mind, objections of this sort have enjoyed considerable popularity. It is typically pointed out that we cannot step outside our own minds to compare our thoughts with mind-independent reality. Yet—so the objection continues—on the correspondence theory of truth, this is precisely what we would have to do to gain knowledge. We would have to access reality as it is in itself, independently of our cognition, and determine whether our thoughts correspond to it. Since this is impossible, since all our access to the world is mediated by our cognition, the correspondence theory makes knowledge impossible (cf. Kant 1800, intro vii). Assuming that the resulting skepticism is unacceptable, the correspondence theory has to be rejected, and some other account of truth, an epistemic (anti-realist) account of some sort, has to be put in its place (cf., e.g., Blanshard 1941.)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/

The idea of unmediated reality..of some external 'nonlinguistic' world behind any claims we can make about the world we live in...is itself the problem.

[quote = Hegel]

More especially it takes for granted that the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real; in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true — a position which, while calling itself fear of error, makes itself known rather as fear of the truth.

This conclusion comes from the fact that the Absolute alone is true or that the True is alone absolute, It may be set aside by making the distinction that a know ledge which does not indeed know the Absolute as science wants to do, is none the less true too; and that knowledge in general, though it may possibly be incapable of grasping the Absolute, can still be capable of truth of another kind. But we shall see as we proceed that random talk like this leads in the long run to a confused distinction between the absolute truth and a truth of some other sort, and that “absolute”, “knowledge”, and so on, are words which presuppose a meaning that has first to be got at.

With suchlike useless ideas and expressions about knowledge, as an instrument to take hold of the Absolute, or as a medium through which we have a glimpse of truth, and so on (relations to which all these ideas of a knowledge which is divided from the Absolute and an Absolute divided from knowledge in the last resort lead), we need not concern ourselves. Nor need we trouble about the evasive pretexts which create the incapacity of science out of the presupposition of such relations, in order at once to be rid of the toil of science, and to assume the air of serious and zealous effort about it. Instead of being troubled with giving answers to all these, they may be straightway rejected as adventitious and arbitrary ideas; and the use which is here made of words like “absolute”,"knowledge”, as also “objective” and “subjective”, and innumerable others, whose meaning is assumed to be familiar to everyone, might well be regarded as so much deception. For to give out that their significance is universally familiar and that everyone indeed possesses their notion, rather looks like an attempt to dispense with the only important matter, which is just to give this notion. With better right, on the contrary, we might spare ourselves the trouble of talking any notice at all of such ideas and ways of talking which would have the effect of warding off science altogether; for they make a mere empty show of knowledge which at once vanishes when science comes on the scene.
[/quote]



https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phintro.htm

A little more on the proposed us-language-world fusion (which maybe only I care about...we shall see.) We see and touch objects of course without talking about them. Our lives are not just language. You tell me you have not eaten all the plums in the icebox, but I go to get one and there are none. What you said does not correspond to what I see. But this seeing and feeling the empty ice box can play no role in reasoning. Sensations are not the inputs (or outputs) of inferences. It's the desire to drag in the ineffable or not-yet-effed ghost that causes us so much trouble.

You imply there are plums in the icebox.
I report that there are not.
I conclude and claim that something is rotten in Denmark, that you probably lied.

I don't suggest we deny the realm of the ghost. There's just not much to do with it. It reminds me of Popper. Where scientific hypotheses come from doesn't matter, doesn't give them their status or lack thereof as scientific hypotheses.

If I may wax phenomenological again, here's a different approach to the same insight into the centrality of language for us as our rational selves, not only sentient but sapient. I take the following to gesture toward the 'field of meaning' which we share as our essentially familiar and intelligible world, that thing that we can be right or wrong about, because it transcends each of us individually, encompassing us, our source and our future grave. (Ha ha !)

[quote= Heidegger]
Language is not merely a tool which man possesses alongside many others; language first grants the possibility of standing in the midst of the openness of beings. Only where there is language, is there world, that is, the constantly changing cycle of decision and work, of action and responsibility, but also of arbitrariness and turmoil, decay and confusion.
...
The one as that which forms everyday being-with-one-another...constitutes what we call the public in the strict sense of the word. It implies that the world is always already primarily given as the common world. It is not the case on the one hand there are first individual subjects which at any given time have their own world; and that the task would then arise of putting together, by virtue of some sort of arrangement, the various particular worlds of individuals and of agreeing how one would have a common world. This is how philosophers imagine these things when they ask about the constitution of the inter-subjective world. We say instead that the first thing that is given is the common world -- the one.
...
Being-there as being-in-the-world is primarily governed by logos…Coming into the world, one grows into a determinate tradition of speaking, seeing, interpreting. Being-in-the-world is an already-having-the-world-thus-and-so. This peculiar fact, that the world into which I enter, in which I awaken, is there for me in a determinate interpretedness, I designate terminologically as fore-having.

Dasein is history.
...
Dasein, whiling away its own time in each case, is at the same time always a generation. So a specific interpretedness precedes every Dasein in the shape of the generation itself. What is preserved in the generation is itself the outcome of earlier views and disputes, earlier interpretations and past concerns.
...
The wellspring of such persistent elements lies in the past, but they continue to have such an impact in the present that their dominance is taken for granted and their development forgotten. Such a forgotten past is inherent in the prevailing interpretedness of being-together-with-one-another. To the extent that Dasein lives from (cares about) this past, it is this past itself.
...
The world with which we are concerned and being-in itself are both interpreted within the parameters of a particular framework of intelligibility.
...
One has a timeworn conceptuality at one's disposal. It provides the fore-concept for the interpretation. The interpretedness of a 'time' is strictly determined by these structural factors and the variable forms of their realization. And it is precisely the unobtrusiveness of these factors --the fact that one is not aware of them -- which gives public interpretedness its taken-for-granted character. However, the 'fore'-character in the structure of interpretedness shows us that it is none other than what has already been that jumps ahead, as it were, of a present time pervaded by interpretedness. Guided by its interpretedness, expectant concern lives its own past.
[/quote]

Quoting Pie

I'm far the first to gripe about the mysteries of the correspondence theory of truth. I'm just asking how you navigate or tolerate them (the traditional criticisms, and the one in particular that I tried to articulate.)

I don't see a viable alternative to the correspondance theory of truth, and never managed to understand any of its critiques.

Quoting Olivier5

I don't see a viable alternative to the correspondance theory of truth, and never managed to understand any of its critiques.

:up:

This is just about it, the fusion of word and world, inasmuch as we can know it.

At the heart of the linguistic process lay an in-built mechanism, a feedback loop, that accounted for language’s ability to regenerate itself. This consisted in the continuous interplay between an external sound-form and an inner conceptual form, and their “mutual interpenetration constitute the individual form of language.” The dynamic and self-generating aspects of language are therefore inscribed in its very core...

In spite of Humboldt’s attempt to salvage universalism for knowledge, his view of language inevitably ushered in an epistemological relativism, with each language yielding a peculiar way of seeing the world. For “man [lives] with the objects… exclusively in the way that they are conveyed to him by language” with language “placing definite boundaries upon the spirits of those who speak it.” In this light, language was construed as a ‘contingent absolute’ as German philosopher Jürgen Habermas later put it. Crucially, this radical relativism seemed to blur the distinction between mere knowledge and reality itself. Indeed, within such relativism, language seemed to embody reality itself...

In keeping with his predecessors, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) starkly opposed any passive, instrumental understanding of language. ...Language could only be grasped on its own terms, as a force of its own, intimately bound to Being , whose voice it conveys to man. It was “neither expression nor a matter of human manipulation” but merely “spoke.” ...

According to this idea, human consciousness’s very access to entities was predicated on language. Simply put, there was no being, no prior distinct existence, from which any essence for anything could be understood, without a linguistic understanding of it. In the words of the German poet Stefan George, “there is no thing where the word is lacking” (from ‘The Word’, 1928). Heidegger expanded on this ‘ontological’ nature of language in his essay ‘On The Way To Language’: “The thing is a thing only where the word is found for the thing… The word alone supplies being to the thing, [for] something only is, where the appropriate word names something as existing and in this way institutes the particular entity as such… The being of that which is resides in the word. For this reason, the following phrase holds good: language is the house of being” (On the Way to Language, 1959). Within this framework, language is world-instituting, since it brings about a ‘happening of being’ in which man is thrown and through which a world appears.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/Herder_Humboldt_Heidegger_Language_As_World-Disclosure

Quoting Pie

If we jettison apparent nonsense like the world-in-itself...the world is just that which is the case. To me this is not correspondence. There's just use/mention. 'P' is a string of letters. P is piece of a world, a truth (or an attempted truthery.)

Well said. I'm not surprised that it's @bongo fury who has you pointing this out. I've tried to make the same point to Bongo a few times.

Quoting Banno

?bongo fury I don't see a point to what you said more than:

That the dog has fleas is a fact.
"The dog has fleas" is a sentence.
That "The dog has fleas" is true is a fact.
"'The dog has fleas' is true" is a sentence.
That "'The dog has fleas' is true" is true is a fact.
""'The dog has fleas' is true" is true" is a sentence...

...and so on.

to which he replied with a quote from Sam:
Quoting Sam26

True propositions mirror or picture facts, they are not facts in themselves. This is explained in W. picture theory of meaning.

So it seems that somehow for Bongo, that the cat is on the mat is not a fact, but a sentence.

Now that might be what Wittgenstein (at least in the Tractatus) is claiming, but Davidson seems to suggest otherwise:

On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme:In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not
relinquish the notion of objective truth -quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get con- ceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth ot sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the tfamiliarobjects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.

That the cat is on the mat is a fact, not a sentence.

Reply to Banno I'm not even sure what Davidson is saying, it seems a bit confusing to me. I'm pretty sure I understand what Wittgenstein is saying, at least in terms of the picture theory. A proposition, whether true or false presents a picture of reality. So, if a proposition gives us a picture of a cat on the mat, then that pictorial form either matches reality or it doesn't. If it does, then it's true, if it doesn't, then it's false. W. didn't give up the picture theory (i.e., some propositions are a kind of picture of reality), he just gave us a much broader conception of language based on how we use the concepts.

Quoting Banno

Well said. I'm not surprised that it's bongo fury who has you pointing this out. I've tried to make the same point to Bongo a few times.

It's good to hear I'm not crazy. I thought that was how others were taking Wittgenstein in that context (who seems to echo Hegel.)

Quoting Banno

In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth -quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get con- ceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth ot sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the tfamiliarobjects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false. — On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme


That the cat is on the mat is a fact, not a sentence.

Excellent quote ! I think our views are pretty damned close on this issue. A rare pleasure.

Quoting Sam26

I'm not even sure what Davidson is saying, it seems a bit confusing to me.

I think the point is that reality, the one we (can) talk about, is 'already' linguistic...and not something 'subintelligble' that words can somehow picture, as if holding up concepts to judge against something real-but-non-conceptual. The 'picture,' if true, is the world.

Quoting Banno

In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth -quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board.

This sounds like Hegel, big time.

Reply to Sam26
Quoting Pie

...reality... is 'already' linguistic...

Yes; it's in a sense the elimination of the picture giving the meaning in favour of the use replacing the meaning in an expression. That the cat is on the mat is not a picture of the world, it is the world.

The exegetic question might be how the picture theory changed between the Tactatus and the Investigations, and so whether it is compatible with the demise of conceptual schema.

Quoting Pie

This sounds like Hegel, big time.

But without the idealism. That is, maintaining a bivalent logic in the face of unknown (empirical?) truths.

Quoting Banno

Yes; it's in a sense the elimination of the picture giving the meaning in favour of the use replacing the meaning in an expression. That the cat is on the mat is not a picture of the world, it is the world.

I continue to think that we agree.

Do we agree that there is no point in making promises or bananas less real than protons ?

Quoting Banno

But without the idealism. That is, maintaining a bivalent logic in the face of unknown truths.

Care to say more ? I don't know if I ever paid much attention to that theme in Hegel.

Reply to Pie Well the logic of promises the grammar - differs from that of bananas and neutrinos. Promises have a basis in institutional facts - the utterance of a promise counts as placing oneself under an obligation. Bananas and neutrinos tend to do what they like regardless of our institutions.

Quoting Pie

I think the point is that reality, the one we (can) talk about, is 'already' linguistic...and not something 'subintelligble' that words can somehow picture, as if holding up concepts to judge against something real-but-non-conceptual. The 'picture,' if true, is the world.

If that's what Davidson is saying, then I disagree. Reality isn't, in my view "already linguistic." We use language (propositions) to describe reality, propositions are separate from the facts of reality.

Quoting Sam26

If that's what Davidson is saying, then I disagree.

I suspected you disagreed, actually, from what you said before.

Quoting Pie

Care to say more ?

Not about Hegel. Not an area I'll claim to understand.

But idealism is tied to antirealism, and hence assumes a grammar in which some statements have no truth value. I suppose that if Hegel is an idealist, as is commonly supposed, then he drops bivalent logic somewhere...?

Quoting Sam26

We use language (propositions) to describe reality, propositions are separate from the facts of reality.

My concern with this approach is that it's not clear what the pictures are picturing. How does language function as an image for what you insist is not already linguistic ? We don't hold up propositions to promises or electrons.

Quoting Banno

I suppose that if Hegel is an idealist, as is commonly supposed, then he drops bivalent logic somewhere...?

I can look into that. I have Braver's book, A Thing of This World, which approaches the great antirealists in analytic terms (including explicitly bivalence.)

I think Hegel is an idealist in the way that Davidson is, which might be to say misunderstood as one. (Do folks accuse Davidson of that? I only know him via Rorty, really.)

Quoting Banno

Yes; it's in a sense the elimination of the picture giving the meaning in favour of the use replacing the meaning in an expression. That the cat is on the mat is not a picture of the world, it is the world.

He didn't eliminate the idea that propositions can picture. He just expanded the idea. Some propositions are a kind of picture. Propositions can be a model of reality, and that model either agrees with reality or it doesn't. Even Einstein's theories were models that were confirmed, i.e., it agreed or it didn't. When the experiments confirmed the model, then the model was accepted as a fact of reality.

Quoting Pie

My concern with this approach is that it's not clear what the pictures are picturing. How does language function as an image for what you insist is not already linguistic ?

So, if I describe a picture to you, you wouldn't be clear what the picture is picturing. Now I'm not saying that all propositions fit this approach, but I am saying that some propositional uses do fit this approach.

Quoting Pie

I think Hegel is an idealist in the way that Davidson is, which might be to say misunderstood as one.

:grin: You are brave, saying that out loud...

But it should get your thread a dozen more pages.

Reply to Banno At least a dozen more. :yikes:

Quoting Banno

You are brave, saying that out loud...

The part about Hegel ? Or about Davidson ? (I'm guessing Hegel.)

Quoting Sam26

Propositions can be a model of reality

So here's the issue, since Davidson shows the notion of differing conceptual schemes to lack coherence. If we are to say that these pictures or models are conceptual schemes, then Davidson's criticism of conceptual schemes becomes a critique of the picture theory.

If propositions are a model of reality, which is the model of reality - that the cat is on the mat, or "the cat is on the mat"? The use or the mention?

If the picture is that the cat is on the mat, then Davidson's criticism applies. If the picture is "the cat is on the mat", then it doesn't.

Reply to Pie Hegel.

I'll here make an invocation prayer to @Tobias, who knows such things. Tobi, is Hegel really an idealist? What is idealism, for Hegel?

Quoting Sam26

Propositions can be a model of reality,

I think in the Tractacus he's presenting that as the way we normally imagine things: propositions corresponding to the world the same way a photograph corresponds to a scene.

But the picture can never be in the picture. When we present a theory of propositions, we've strayed beyond what language good for, into nonsense. We're just so enthralled by the theory that we don't realize this. We've forgotten that some things can't be explained. We should pass over them in silence.

Quoting Banno

If the picture is that the cat is on the mat, then Davidson's criticism applies. If the picture is "the cat is on the mat", then it doesn't.

The model is my or someone else's contention that there is a cat on the mat in my living room (that there's a fact of the matter). A proposition by itself, without the belief, is just a potential picture of a fact that hasn't been presented as a particular belief about the world. It's neither true nor false.

[quote=Braver]
Hegel's idealism is not the metaphysical, Berkeleyan claim that only minds and ideas exist, but rather the negative anti-realist claim that we have no way of talking about input ab extra.

Although experience comes in from the outside in some sense, when we try to pin down what this means, it ends up becoming 'an otherness which is superseded in the act of grasping it.'
[/quote]

[quote=Hegel]
We can no longer talk of things at all,i.e.,of something that would be for consciousness merely the negative of itself.
...
Thought is always in its own sphere; its relations are with itself, and it is its own object.
[/quote]

Reply to Banno
Added Braver's take (small part of it). Verdict: more of an anti-realist. Hegel rejects bivalence only in a dialectical sense. Philosophers offer partial truths, not wholly true or false, which are synthesized into less partial, more complete truths.

Quoting Tate

I think in the Tractacus he's presenting that as the way we normally imagine things: propositions corresponding to the world the same way a photograph corresponds to a scene.

Exactly.

Quoting Tate

But the picture can never be in the picture. When we present a theory of propositions, we've strayed beyond what language good for, into nonsense. We're just so enthralled by the theory that we don't realize this. We've forgotten that some things can't be explained. We should pass over them in silence.

Parts of this I agree with, other parts would have to be explained further. I'm not a fan of passing over anything, or much of anything, in silence. This has become a kind of cliché for many philosophers.

Quoting Tate

But the picture can never be in the picture. When we present a theory of propositions, we've strayed beyond what language good for, into nonsense.

But this means that his theory doesn't even include its condition of possiblity. A theory of language and meaning that must exclude that theory itself ...fails?

Quoting Pie

But this means that his theory doesn't even include its condition of possiblity. A theory of language and meaning that must exclude that theory itself ...fails?

We've built a ladder to nowhere.

Quoting Sam26

I'm not a fan of passing over anything, or much of anything, in silence.

That's the intellect's motto. It thinks it can understand everything.

Reply to Tate :up:

Reply to Pie My unsophisticated understanding of Hegel says truth is approached asymptotically; a notion at odds with my more analytic roots. For Hegel, sentences are neither true nor false, at least while history endures.

Peirce had a similar view.

But it seems to me that at least some sentences are true or false, and that we sometimes even know which ones.

This by way of returning to your OP.

Reply to Sam26 It would be interesting then to apply Davidson's critique directly to the Tractatus and then the Investigations. Another Doctoral Thesis for someone.

The first issue might be to identify where the picture resides. Davidson's critique begins with conceptual relativism, so one might ask if the picture that Jim sees is the same as the picture that John sees. If the answer is to be "no", then the picture theory does seem to be an example of conceptual relativism, and liable to Davidson's criticism. If not, then where is the picture?

.Quoting Banno

But it seems to me that at least some sentences are true or false, and that we sometimes even know which ones.

I agree. Maybe Hegel would too. I've read a fair amount of his work, and I don't recall him disputing relatively simple claims being true or false.

Quoting Pie

I don't recall him disputing relatively simple claims being true or false.

Then Hegel seems to be working with more than one sort of truth, with all the problems of consistency that would entail.

So I'll stay with Frege and the analytic approach.

Reply to Sam26

Quoting Banno

where is the picture?

The difference might be the fading of the solipsism of the Tractatus in favour of the public language of the Investigations. The picture ceases to be the construction of one mind and becomes the combined work of a community.

Reply to Banno
Well I wouldn't try to sell anyone on Hegel in 2022, not the whole clump of him anyway.

If I could go back in time, I'd have studied Sellars and Brandom sooner.

Quoting Banno

The picture ceases to be the construction of one mind and becomes the combined work of a community.

:up:

Age'll do that to you, make you realize the world is bigger than you.

Reply to Banno It seems the further we look at W. the further apart our disagreements become. I'm not really a fan of Davidson's ideas.

Reply to Sam26 Then where do we differ? Thats the interesting bit.

I'm not sure that Davidson and Wittgenstein are at odds. Consider:

Davidson: On the very idea...:I want to urge that this second dualism of scheme and content,
of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, cannot be made intelligible and defensible. It is itself a dogma of empiricism, the third dogma.
to call empiricism.

Now if the world is all that is the case, then aren't the scheme and the content as one? "What is the case" being the scheme, and the world being the content?

From years of discussing antinatalism on this forum, I will say that people only believe in possibility as a condition when it suits them.

If talking about the potential for something to happen based on conditions.. everyone is on board, yay! If it is talking about a possible person, that would be imposed upon had it been born, boo! And the proverbial crowds throw their rotten tomatoes...

Quoting Banno

But it seems to me that at least some sentences are true or false, and that we sometimes even know which ones.

But the former half is the very problem I think Peirce is addressing (my knowledge of Peirce coming via a very roundabout route - Ramsey-> Cheryl Misak's work on his Pragmatism -> Peirce so forgive my ignorance of the primary source).

It seems to you that at least some sentences are true. It seems that way to me too, but I'd bet my hat we don't have the same list of sentences. So what do we say about this 'seeing to us'? What is it that 'seems' and what do we say about the differences?

Ramsey puts it down to our experience and our rules (or habits) of thought. But this is pragmatism (which I take it is not up your street). So what do you make of the differences in our list? What, for you, is the 'seeming to you' about the truth of sentences - what's happening when a sentence 'seems to you' to be true?

Quoting Isaac

It seems that way to me too, but I'd bet my hat we don't have the same list of sentences.

Of course you are right. But I will also go along with Davidson in pointing out that overwhelmingly, we agree about far more than we disagree. So you and I will agree that this is a sentence of English, in a thread on-line, discussing epistemology; that cats usually have four legs and that four is twice two. The thing about our agreements is that they don't cause us much consternation, and so in order to avoid tedium, occupy little of our conversation. But our disagreements are perturbing, and do occupy our minds and discussions. So we give much more time to our disagreements than to our agreement.

So if we attempted complete lists of our beliefs, our lists would be tediously similar, but include a small number of much more interesting exceptions.

Quoting Isaac

what's happening when a sentence 'seems to you' to be true?

In a word, belief. And belief is not truth. T-sentences show pretty much all there is to say about truth. Belief is a different animal. Belief is much more complex. HAppy to go on at length about beleif, but this is a thread about truth,.

Quoting Isaac

But this is pragmatism (which I take it is not up your street).

No, not if it is taken as a theory of truth. As a way of deciding what we might do well to believe, it's fine. As a theory of truth, it sucks.

How this fits with your thinking might be interesting. It would seem that neural nets are the experts on expediency. Truth doesn't matter to them, I guess. But that's fine, since for the most part truth is greatly overrated - as is demonstrated by the triviality of T-sentences.

Quoting Tate

OK, hold up.

So, no?

Reply to Pie
My personal opinion of "truth" is that it should unambiguously tell us whether we are animals or creation of god.

In respect to Jesus' saying of truth, I think good start is Lewis Trilemma:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lewis_Trilemma

knowing the "truth" is very powerful because either entire world becomes atheists or entire world converts, and truth if known should not cause any suspicions further.
Truth I think may not be personal thing.

But then, what is "truth"?

Quoting Banno

So if we attempted complete lists of our beliefs, our lists would be tediously similar, but include a small number of much more interesting exceptions.

Without question, yes. Not an insignificant point either, but I'm not sure that the volume of agreements caries any semantic weight...?

Quoting Banno

T-sentences show pretty much all there is to say about truth.

Do they though?

I think we use 'true' and 'truth' to carry an awful lot more meaning that T-sentences encompass.

If I say "you must believe me...It's true, I tell you!" I'm not using 'true' just to mean that the state of affairs is as I describe them. I added 'true' to implore, to add weight. It's indicating the strength of my belief, or the urgency with which I need you to agree. It has nothing to do with (on this occasion) the correspondence of the phrase to the state of affairs.

"Everything John says is true" is about my faith in John.

"True love" is just really, really intense love.

And so on...

Quoting Banno

No, not if it is taken as a theory of truth. As a way of deciding what we might do well to believe, it's fine. As a theory of truth, it sucks.

I can see what you mean. There's something amiss in seeing truth as success in that we understand the concept of a coincidence. I don't think it 'sucks', but I can see the flaws. I'm more of an 'iron them out' person.

Quoting Banno

It would seem that neural nets are the experts on expediency. Truth doesn't matter to them, I guess.

Well, I've often been found to say so, yes. But when doing so, I'm talking about a correspondence theory of truth. It matters not one jot to our inference system if it's model of hidden states is how the hodden states are, only that it allows an accurate prediction of the force needed to be applied to them to resist entropic decay.

Where I struggle with that notion is that it imports an idea of 'the way things 'really' are, and as you'll know, I'm allergic to the notion of there being a way things 'really' are.

If we say that the brain's inferences need not be 'true' (ie there's some actual state that the external world is in, which my brain does not care about) then I may come out in hives.

I prefer to see the external world as constraints. Something about it constrains our models of how it is such that they won't work if they're not within those constraints. This is where I have problems with the asymptomatic notion of truth (and also where I think Ramsey diverges from Peirce - but not sure). I don't think of hidden states as have a single 'way they are' at all, only several ways they aren't.

As for 'truth' though, I wouldn't say it referred to any of that. I think it's far more likely to be a socially functional word. It's used to persuade, not identify.

Reply to Banno Banno, before I respond further I'm going to do some reading on Davidson. I'm not that familiar with his work. All I have to go on is what's being said in here about him, and that's not enough for me to respond intelligently. It seems I disagree with some of the things he's proposed, but I want to make sure.

Quoting Isaac

I think we use 'true' and 'truth' to carry an awful lot more meaning that T-sentences encompass.

If I say "you must believe me...It's true, I tell you!" I'm not using 'true' just to mean that the state of affairs is as I describe them. I added 'true' to implore, to add weight. It's indicating the strength of my belief, or the urgency with which I need you to agree. It has nothing to do with (on this occasion) the correspondence of the phrase to the state of affairs.

This begins to add what seems to me to be lacking in the discussion, which is the moral dimension, which I suggest is inescapably there from the beginning. The monkey tribe has 2 warning calls, one for threats from above - eagles, and one for threats from below - snakes. Meaning is use so the use is to get down from the treetops or get up from the ground according to the danger, and there is already the possibility and the potential use of falsehood; a monkey spots a tasty morsel on the ground and gives a false ground warning cry, the tribe scuttles up the trees, leaving the liar in sole possession of the tasty morsel.

But the lie is dependent on the truth-telling of the community. If falsehood was normalised, the cry would cease to have the meaning of warning of danger, and come to be an alert of something interesting on the ground. Only truth telling can support language, and habitual liars are not worth listening to as their speech has no meaning. Thus to the extent that we live in a world of language, we live in a moral social world in which the truth has value and falsehood is destructive of meaning of society and of our world.

Truth, one might say is redundant just as long as it is adhered to, but what is needed is an account of falsehood, which is parasitic on a community of truth tellers.

Quoting unenlightened

Thus to the extent that we live in a world of language, we live in a moral social world in which the truth has value and falsehood is destructive of meaning of society and of our world.

But where I live, it's common to see birds feigning injury. If you walk near their nests, they'll try to lead you away by flapping on the ground. They're just protecting their offspring. So maybe it's not always evil.

Quoting SpaceDweller

My personal opinion of "truth" is that it should unambiguously tell us whether we are animals or creation of god.

Don't theist believe that a god created all of the animals and not just us ?

I acknowledge that the God issue is decisive. If there is God (as typically conceived), then are slaves who should maybe not bother with philosophy. I take it for granted that there is not such a God, and that there's only us down here, trying to be less stupid than we were yesterminute.

What is it to take something to be true ? If I believe a pastry is toxic, I (probably) don't eat it. Does 'believe' itself have a kind of absoluteness ? He did X, because he believed Y. Because the world seemed like Y to him. It turns out he was (acting like he was) in the wrong world.

Quoting Isaac

It's indicating the strength of my belief, or the urgency with which I need you to agree.

:up:

This may be the redundancy theory with a new attention paid to pragmatics. 'The ice cream is very very cold.' 'It is indeed true that it is indeed true that it is indeed true.'

Quoting unenlightened

But the lie is dependent on the truth-telling of the community.

:up:

Does the concept of a belief depend on the concept of a truth in the same way ? Is "seems" a parasite on "is"?

Quoting unenlightened

Only truth telling can support language, and habitual liars are not worth listening to as their speech has no meaning. Thus to the extent that we live in a world of language, we live in a moral social world in which the truth has value and falsehood is destructive of meaning of society and of our world.

:up:

World-sharing seems primary. An assertion updates the world in the tribe mind ?

Quoting schopenhauer1

If talking about the potential for something to happen based on conditions.. everyone is on board, yay! If it is talking about a possible person, that would be imposed upon had it been born, boo! And the proverbial crowds throw their rotten tomatoes...

Antinatalism is OK with me, but, having read Darwin and the boys, I don't think much will come of it, unless you all get your wish from a nuclear winter, as Chads slug it out for nubiles, wallowing in the happiness of being envied...and a bit in the pleasures of flesh. Are we self-replicating, self-torturing slime ? Sure we are, in a certain slant of light, winter afternoons. Let us write novels about a terrorist group that actually gets it. You do see that we have to destroy all life in the universe, don't you? This slime, if given time, will up and walk and talk and spread its sinister wings. We must stamp it out entirely. But what of abiogenesis ? If life can erupt once from nonlife, it can erupt again. It seems we must destroy the universe itself...or accelerate its heat death making sentient organization impossible. The non-selfish thing to do is breed breed breed and advance our technical power for the eventual cosmic suicide. We suffer Christ-like now so that they will neither suffer nor joy in a future that will arrive unwitnessed. Thigh will be dim inert as it is uneven. (Thesis chew sorry.)

Reply to Pie
Your gloomy prose is poetry to my ears :lol:.

But really, why I brought this up was that this thread started to discuss potentiality and actuality. And it seems that in many discussions about AN, people think because a parent is effecting/affecting a gamete (that then turns into a person) rather than directly a person, that no "force" of a person's birth is happening. And I find this statement wildly incorrect and sophistic. The parent starts a chain of events that results in a person. THAT person born is the person that has NOW (at it's time of birth) been imposed/forced, even if "they" were not around earlier. The very fact of the state of affairs of their presence becomes what is defined as the "imposition" put upon a person by the parents' move to procreate.

Quoting unenlightened

Truth, one might say is redundant just as long as it is adhered to, but what is needed is an account of falsehood, which is parasitic on a community of truth tellers.

:up:

Very important point. Any definition of truth must account or make room for its opposite -- falsehood.

Reply to Tate Indeed, and insects sometimes pretend to be sticks.

But I didn't say 'evil'. Imagine a world where everything looks like something else. Sight loses its utility, and even looking like something else loses it's utility. What I am saying is that language has social utility, but only to the extent that meaning is retained, and meaning is only retained as long as most people tell the truth most of the time. Nevertheless, there is utility for the individual in a lie, that exploits the established meaning.

Quoting Pie

Does the concept of a belief depend on the concept of a truth in the same way ? Is "seems" a parasite on "is"?

I'm not sure what you mean. If I tell lies, I am exploiting your propensity to believe what is said. The propensity to believe is the exact same thing as understanding the language. For example, politicians have been banging on in the UK about "levelling up" for a number of years in the UK. And we understand that as a raft of policies intended to raise the economic prosperity of the regions to the level of the Southeast. But they have actually implemented policies that do the opposite, rendering the phrase literally meaningless and causing people to lose interest in politics because it is all, and they are all, becoming meaningless; their language is meaningless. The culture is literally being destroyed as we speak because meaning is use, and language is useless unless it tells the truth. Cue Orwell, cue Kant.

Reply to schopenhauer1
Personally I think it is an imposition to throw yet another babe into the vat of acid. Is it wrong ? No easy answer. The safe thing is nothing at all. But is this safety better than variety? Than the possibility of falling in (requited) love for the first time ? Then glorying in a conquest on a day of victory ? Life is [s]exploitation[/s] Chad. I am the Chad of Chads, rabid protean capitalism incarnate, amoral lifeslime. I joke about and confess that in us which is other than those more welcome better angels.

Quoting unenlightened

The propensity to believe is the exact same thing as understanding the language.

Nicely put ! There is something primary in taking to be true. For the believer, the world 'is' P.

Quoting unenlightened

The culture is literally being destroyed as we speak because meaning is use, and language is useless unless it tells the truth. Cue Orwell, cue Kant.

I'm on a nearby wavelength. Rationality is normative. Truthtelling is fundamental. Irrationality is antisocial.

Quoting Pie

The culture is literally being destroyed as we speak because meaning is use, and language is useless unless it tells the truth. Cue Orwell, cue Kant.
— unenlightened

I'm on a nearby wavelength. Rationality is normative. Truthtelling is fundamental. Irrationality is antisocial.

If rationality is normative, then mustn’t irrationality also be normative? Put differently, isn’t one person’s irrationality simply another’s rationality? If falsehood is the opposite of truth telling, isn’t a lie motivated by a prior breakdown in communication that it is an attempt to rationally cope with?

It has been said that postmodernism plays into the human predilection to give into irrationalism. Supposedly, even those on the right who claim to despise everything postmodernism stands for can be contaminated by its pernicious irrationalist impetus. As the argument goes , if the other side can invent any rules they want , so can we.

While conservatives and modernists debate which side is rational or irrational, and what foreign(French) influence to blame for it, postmodernists assert that it is not irrationality that leads to fascisms and totalitarianisms but rigid or one-dimensional notions of the rational and the true.

Quoting Joshs

Put differently, isn’t one person’s irrationality simply another’s rationality?

I think we can try to take a god's perspective on the great stage of fools and say so.

But does this not cut back against itself ? Aren't I just as rational as you then ? From what lofty perch can you criticize or instruct me ? If not from one implicitly higher and better and more rational?

Hence normative. Ought is primary.

Quoting Joshs

If falsehood is the opposite of truth telling, isn’t a lie motivated by a prior breakdown in communication that it is an attempt to rationally cope with?

There's an industry of criminals who trick the elderly out their money posing as IT. Is it not safe to assume that they are motivated by greed? Perhaps also by envy ?

Quoting Joshs

It has been said that postmodernism plays into the human predilection to give into irrationalism.

I like some of the thinkers with bad reputations. Just because the 'wrong' (irrational) people use 'irrational' irrationally does not ruin the concept. Indeed, we are going to have some word, I venture, for 'not inferring correctly.'

Quoting Joshs

postmodernists assert that it is not irrationality that leads to fascisms and totalitarianisms but rigid or one-dimensional notions of the rational and the true.

Or, as I might put, irrational notions of the rational and true...

Are you sure this isn't just a trigger word for you ? Do you object to 'right' or 'correct' or 'proper' in the same way ? Of course we will always, as humans, debate their appropriate or right or correct application.

Reply to Pie Quoting Pie

I think we can try to take a god's perspective on the great stage of fools and say so.

But does this not cut back against itself ? Aren't I just as rational as you then ? From what lofty perch can you criticize or instruct me ? If not from one implicitly higher and better ?

I believe all worldviews are equally valid , moral and rational. I also believe that worldviews evolve along with, and in response to, the progressing feedback from the materially and linguistically constructed niche that we inhabit. i don’t think this development should be understood via binaries like truth-nontruth and rational-irrational but along an axis of anticipatory sense-making. I cannot impose my worldview on you but offer it to you and see if you find it intelligible and pragmatically useful relative to your perspective.

Quoting Joshs

I believe all worldviews are equally valid , moral and rational.

I can maybe guess at what you mean, but surely you know what Chad will ask you here. What about Hitler and the boys ? Can we really not find them wrong, mistaken, crooked ?

I do not dispute that a 'monster' can feel pretty good about himself. From his perspective, all is well. It's 'rational' to collect baby's bones. (I'm thinking of the end of the first season of True Detective.)

I agree pretty much with Rorty about a necessary or unchosen or ineluctable ethnocentrism. We are thrown into patterns of feeling and response. We can't really be so neutral but merely slip into a relatively detached and god-liked mode.

Quoting Joshs

i don’t think this development should be understood via binaries like truth-nontruth and rational-irrational but along an axis of anticipatory sense-making.

Why would basic judgments like right/wrong and good/bad not be crucial to such sense-making ? Are we not beings who desire and fear?

Quoting Pie

For the believer, the world 'is' P.

The believer should probably recognize that P could be false, else she'll have no chance of avoiding being a victim of a big fat lie.

Quoting unenlightened

What I am saying is that language has social utility, but only to the extent that meaning is retained, and meaning is only retained as long as most people tell the truth most of the time.

True.

Quoting Tate

The believer should probably recognize that P could be false, else she'll have no chance of avoiding being a victim of a big fat lie.

Philosophers fear being deceived more than others ? While strong poets fear being forgotten more than others ?

Quoting Pie

Philosophers fear being deceived more than others ?

The only people who don't worry about being taken for a fool, are fools.

Quoting Tate

The only people who don't worry about being taken for a fool, are fools.

:up:

Agreed. But we're philosophers ! Someone out there my lecture us on the tax we don't know we're paying. I've been reading The Confidence Man lately by Melville, and there are lots of speeches about the virtue of faith in our fellow man...speeches made by the devil in the midst of conning others admittedly...

Reply to Pie Quoting Pie

Why would basic judgments like right/wrong and good/bad not be crucial to such sense-making ? Are we not beings who desire and fear?

right/wrong and good/bad are not separate categories from sense-making. They express nothing other than the organizational dynamics of sense-making. We are wholly oriented toward anticipating events , and negative emotions , especially of the sort that motivate our moral sentiments, reflect a partially chaotic scene from our vantage of construing. We can’t fathom why the other chose to act in the way they acted , because we don’t know how to step out of our world into theirs. So we assume the problem lies not with a difference in sense-making but with a difference in motivation, which we treat as separate from cognition.

nMost philosophies and psychologies make blame irreducible. That is, they blame wayward behavior on intransigent, irrational, arbitrary, pathological motives. Blame and anger are thus closely allied. Look at the synonyms for angry blame:

These include: irritation, annoyance, disapproval, condemnation, feeling insulted, taking umbrage, resentment, exasperation, impatience, hatred, ire, outrage, contempt, righteous indignation, ‘adaptive' anger, perceiving the other as deliberately thoughtless, lazy, culpable, perverse, inconsiderate, disrespectful, disgraceful, greedy, evil, sinful, criminal.

They also include supposedly ‘non-emotional’ assessments of culpability.

These assessments of blame do not point to facts of theatre concerning true object of their blame , but their own failure to effectively comprehend the rationality behind the others behavior. This is because we mistake content for process. The content of thought doesn’t really have very much to do with either ethics or rational cognition, except as a place mark for the anticipatory organizational processes of sense-making.

Reply to Pie Quoting Pie

There's an industry of criminals who trick the elderly out their money posing as IT. Is it not safe to assume that they are motivated by greed? Perhaps also by envy ?

‘Greed’ is a convenient label we slap on others ( and sometimes ourselves) as a way of blaming them for our own failure to understand their behavior more insightfully.

Quoting Joshs

We can’t fathom why the other chose to act in the way they acted , because we don’t know how to step out of our world into theirs.

I don't think there's (always) such a gulf. I may be a old soul who has made the very mistake myself. I take us to be basically or mostly in the same world, at least among those with whom we share an everyday culture.

Quoting Joshs

So we assume the problem lies not with a difference in sense-making but with a difference in motivation, which we treat as separate from cognition.

Do we treat it so ? The notion of rationalization links motivation and cognition directly. Folk psychoanalysis is part of our shared background.

Quoting Joshs

That is, they blame wayward behavior on intransigent, irrational, arbitrary, pathological motives.

I hesitate to agree. I suggest we look at relative intensities of essentially neutral drives. Sexual desire is a good thing until it's not (as when I flirt inappropriately or am unfaithful). Seeking material comfort and security is a good thing until it's not (as when I don't pay taxes and vote against the greater good or simply steal from others in a crude way). It's not so much what we want but whether we know how to share and respect boundaries. I will grant a few motives which themselves are vilified, such as sexual desires without any legal expression and a desire to wound or kill others...though the last could be useful in a soldier. I guess suicidal motivation is mostly forbidden too.

Quoting Joshs

The content of thought doesn’t really have very much to do with either ethics or rational cognition, except as a place mark for the anticipatory organizational processes of sense-making.

Not sure what you mean here.

Quoting Joshs

‘Greed’ is a convenient label we slap on others ( and sometimes ourselves) as a way of blaming them for our own failure to understand their behavior more insightfully.

Well I give you points for radicality here.

FWIW, there's a passage in Aurelius about barking dogs,a metaphor for 'irrational' or blameworthy humans. The godlike man does not judge, does not get caught in up in merely human notions of good and evil.

Such notions are toys for mere monkeys ?

Quoting Pie

Saussure is one of my favorite thinkers. Good recommendation ! But bad social gesture.

Sorry, I'm not good at social gestures. That's a real handicap, by the way.

Quoting Olivier5

Sorry, I'm not good at social gestures. That's a real handicap, by the way.

No worries. I'll try to be mindful of that. Sorry if I came/come off rude. Text is a tricky medium.

Quoting Pie

FWIW, there's a passage in Aurelius about barking dogs. The godlike man does not judge, does not get caught in up in merely human notions of good and evil.

Such notions are toys for mere monkeys ?

It's been argued -- by a certain Comte-Sponville, specialist of Spinoza -- that one's moral sense is like one's sense of equilibrium: you can apply it to yourself, but not to others. And thus, we can judge ourselves based on our moral sense, but judging others must be based on law, not morality.

Reply to Pie I try to be clear and concise, in general, but often come across as inarticulate and condescending. To my defense, English is not my mother tongue.

Quoting Olivier5

It's been argued -- by a certain Comte-Sponville, specialist of Spinoza -- that one's moral sense is like one's sense of equilibrium: you can apply it to yourself, but not to others.

That sounds good. Personally I'm sympathetic to the idea that it's usually pointless to hate or resent. The grand soul understands. Shakespeare is one of my symbols/heroes. Nothing human is alien to me.

A few scattered remarks:

The story in John is told as a matter of truth, but in truth it is historically dubious. In addition, not putting the blame on Pilate, a Roman official was a defensive move. The question of the truth plays out in different ways.

Pilates question was in response to Jesus saying:

... the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth [or, according to Young's literal translation, everyone who is of the truth] listens to me.

Jesus refused to answer Pilate's question regarding the truth of the matter, that is, whether Jesus is the King of the Jews. Pilate now asks: "what is truth?". He did not walk away but went out to the Jews and said he found no fault in Jesus (18:38). He was not going to pick sides in what he regarded as a dispute between the Jews. Let them decide, but he found no fault, which is not the same as either confirming or denying the claim that Jesus was the King of the Jews. He was not of the people and so not on one side or the other of what he regarded as dispute among this people.

One other point: Simon Peter, who in Matthew is called the rock on which the church is built, in John's gospel lies about his relation to Jesus. The truth and its authoritative representative, is a matter of dispute even within the gospels.


Quoting Pie

I think the point is that reality, the one we (can) talk about, is 'already' linguistic

It is not that reality is linguistic, but that we are; and so it follows that the reality we talk about is linguistic. But our way of being in the world is not the way other animals are in the world or the way that rocks and galaxies are in the world. Further, our way of being in the world is not limited to the linguistic, to what we say or think or talk about or conceptualize. The dogma of the linguistic keeps some in their slumber.

Quoting Banno

is Hegel really an idealist? What is idealism, for Hegel?

From the preface to the Phenomenology, taken from an earlier discussion. The numbers refer to quotes from the text.

[quote]17: In my view … everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance [*] but just as much as subject.

17: ... substantiality comprises within itself the universal, or, it comprises not only the immediacy of knowing but also the immediacy of being, or, immediacy for knowing.

Substance is the whole, knower and known. Substance is not in or a name for the universal. The universal is within substance. It should be noted that Hegel is not rejecting immediacy. We know the immediacy of being in that we are. The immediacy for knowing is 'der Sache selbst', the thing itself that is to be known. I intentionally translated it in this way to draw the connection with Kant.

17: However much taking God to be the one substance shocked the age in which this was expressed, still that was in part because of an instinctive awareness that in such a view self-consciousness only perishes and is not preserved.

If substance is the whole, and as such there can only be one substance, then God is in truth subject. It is not just that God was taken or regarded to be subject. It is something now understood if not yet known. And because it is not fully realized, self-consciousness perishes, but this is only half of it. It is also preserved, taken up anew.

18: Furthermore, the living substance is the being that is in truth subject, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of self-positing, or, that it is the mediation of itself and its becoming-other-to-itself.

The movement of self-positing is the movement described in paragraph 12, the movement in which the subject returns to itself from out of itself. It is a mediated process, but not, as for example with Kant, the mediation of the object given in experience by the subject's understanding, but rather the mediation of the subject with itself. This is not to exclude the object. The object is taken up in the understanding, the I thinks it. In taking up the understanding itself, the understanding is mediated, that is, becomes an object for knowledge for the subject.

18: The true is not an original unity as such, or, not an immediate unity as such. It is the coming-to-be of itself, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal and has its end for its beginning, and which is actual only through this accomplishment and its end.

[/quote]

* I take Hegel to be following Spinoza:

By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. (Ethics , Part One, Definitions, III)

Quoting Olivier5

I try to be clear and concise, in general, but often come across as inarticulate and condescending.

Concision is a fascinating issue. Terseness is typically good (so say the style books), but it can also suggests that the listener is not worth more than a quick remark. Do we find it easier to trust the verbose ? Because their primary motive, being understood, is so clear ? They value us, as ears at least, while the aphorist may take us for a mere target, performing for others at our expense perhaps and not for our illuminate.

To what degree is philosophy caught up in the desire to humiliate ? As Nietzsche might put, the dialogue can be a knife fight.

Quoting Fooloso4

It is not that reality is linguistic, but that we are; and so it follows that the reality we talk about is linguistic.

OK, I want to agree, but you talking about reality here, so that this reality you talk about is indeed linguistic, because we are.

We can abbreviate 'reality is not itself linguistic' as Kant's view, with alternative as Hegel's. Common sense is with Kant, surely, because I can see the plums in the icebox, having told someone they were in there. Uptight philosophers like me should maybe pick Hegel's, because we can't integrate this magical pure seeing into an argument, not until it's been 'processed' into a claim about objects. 'Thought is its own object, and thought is thought's only object.' Sounds crazy, ends up being clever. I think it will sell.

Quoting Fooloso4

The story in John is told as a matter of truth, but in truth it is historically dubious.

Why yes. Who could possibly have reported this conversation if indeed the scene happened as told, with Jesus all alone facing Pilate, without any disciple next to him?

Reply to Pie Quoting Pie

I take us to be basically or mostly in the same world, at least among those with whom we share an everyday culture.

I think thats a huge mistake. By different worlds I don’t mean hopelessly my worldview and yours are incommensurable. I mean that every time you blame someone , including yourself , you are failing to see the contextual validity in the course of action that you condemn or judge.

Quoting Pie

The notion of rationalization links motivation and cognition directly. Folk psychoanalysis is part of our shared background.

Psycho analysis ‘links’ motivation and cognition by treating the former as a mechanism imposing itself on cognition from without. In most other approaches to motivation within psychology , affect shapes , conditions , reinforces intentionality as a partially external influence.

Quoting Pie

I hesitate to agree. I suggest we look at relative intensities of essentially neutral drives. Sexual desire is a good thing until it's not (as when I flirt inappropriately or am unfaithful). Seeking material comfort and security is a good thing until it's not (as when I don't pay taxes and vote against the greater good or simply steal from others in a crude way). It's not so much what we want but whether we know how to share and respect boundaries. I will grant a few motives which themselves are vilified, such as sexual desires without any legal expression and a desire to wound or kill others...though the last could be useful in a soldier. I guess suicidal motivation is mostly forbidden too.

You’re treating ‘drives’ as such external shapers of thought. But thought is intrinsically self-motivating. It doesn’t need arbitrary mechanisms slapped onto it from outside it , to tell what what to like and what it to like. Pleasure and pain are just other ways of talking about the relative success or failure of our attempts to anticipate events via our constructions of them. Affectively negative
experience ( anxiety, fear, hostility, joy, guilt) IS the relative incoherence of a situation for us.

Quoting Pie

... but you talking about reality here, so that this reality you talk about is indeed linguistic ...

What I say about reality is tautologically linguistic, but what I talk about and what is are not the same. But if asked what this reality is, in distinction from what we talk about, we are still within the realm of what we talk about. And, of course, our talking about reality is part of reality.

Quoting Fooloso4

Further, our way of being in the world is not limited to the linguistic, to what we say or think or talk about or conceptualize.

Tell me more.

Quoting Fooloso4

The dogma of the linguistic keeps some in their slumber.

Are we to constantly celebrate the Priority Of Feeling And Sensation or the Ineffable Priority of Real Life within otherwise dry conversations about epistemological and semantic concepts ? Can one not read Blake because one also reads Brandom?

Men are admitted into heaven, not because they have curbed and governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate, uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy: holiness is not the price of entrance into heaven. Those who are cast out are all those who, having no passions of their own, because no intellect, have spent their lives in curbing and governing other people's by the various arts of poverty, and cruelty of all kinds.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Life_of_William_Blake_(1880),_Volume_2/Prose_writings/A_Vision_of_the_Last_Judgment

Quoting Fooloso4

What I say about reality is tautologically linguistic, but what I talk about and what is are not the same.

Like I said, good common sense, which leads nevertheless to endless confusion. We can assign an X marks the ineffable spot if you like, but that's why I call this view Kantian.

Quoting Joshs

I mean that every time you blame someone , including yourself , you are failing to see the contextual validity in the course of action that you condemn or judge.

Oh. Well I think we agree then. But only gods can live there and not just visit.

Reply to Pie Quoting Pie

‘Greed’ is a convenient label we slap on others ( and sometimes ourselves) as a way of blaming them for our own failure to understand their behavior more insightfully.
— Joshs

Well I give you points for radicality here.

I was going to mention that my take on ethics is pretty out there , but it does have many links to postmodern approaches like Ken Gergen’s social constructionism.
He attributes most ethical arguments to rely on what he calls the assumption of the bounded self, which holds individuals morally responsible for their actions.

“…the concepts of subjectivity and agency form close companions to the presumption of moral responsibility. While the individual is fundamentally free to chose, such choice is accompanied by a responsibility for action that will not injure or unjustifiably constrain others. Each individual may thus be held responsible for his/her actions, and may be penalized or rewarded by dint of his/her conduct toward others. The ethical or humane society thus rests on the moral responsibility of the individuals composing that society. Yet, as we have explored the problematics of consciousness, individual agency, and liberty, we also find the justification for moral responsibility rapidly dissolving. How indeed is one to be responsible to oneself, when there is no private, unaculturated self to offer guidance? How could the morally advanced individual generate a set of personal moral principles, except from the repository of cultural intelligibilities at his/her disposal? And, in matters of moral deliberation, if one does hearken to the cultural installation within, then which of the voices should be favored?

For are we not all, in a Bakhtinian sense, akin to polyphonic novels, speaking in multiple voices, reflecting multiple traditions? If we inherit a pluralism of moral intelligibilities, on what grounds could we select among them - save from the standpoint of yet another inherited intelligibility? And, finally, if moral deliberation is inherently cultural, then in what sense are we justified in holding individuals responsible for the humane society? Isn't individual blame thus a mystification of our condition of interdependence?“

“As we find, tendencies toward division and conflict are normal outgrowths of relational life. Prejudice is not, then, a mark of a flawed character—inner rigidity, decomposed cognition, emotional bias, and the like. Rather, so long as we continue the normal process of creating consensus around what is real and good, classes of the undesirable are under construction. Wherever there are tendencies toward unity, cohesion, brotherhood, commitment, solidarity, or community, so alienation is in the making.”(Relational Being Beyond Self and Community)

Quoting Joshs

Psycho analysis ‘links’ motivation and cognition by treating the former as a mechanism imposing itself on cognition from without.

:up:

That squares with my reading of Freud.

Quoting Joshs

Affectively negative
experience ( anxiety, fear, hostility, joy, guilt) IS the relative incoherence of a situation for us.

That seems partially true. There is a brute animality in us that responds to our hand in the fire in one way and the right dose of pain pills in quite another.

Incoherence hurts. I agree. But doesn't that chime with my normative rationality ?

Quoting Joshs

He attributes most ethical arguments to rely on what he calls the assumption of the bounded self, which holds individuals morally responsible for their actions.

Nice quote. There's a passage in Nietzsche that's similar. So-called 'free will' is perhaps best understood in terms of norms of responsibility. We aren't 'truly' or 'perfectly' free. The strong poet is only ever relatively self-created or novel, relatively path-breaking. Does this not remind you of Heidegger?

Quoting Joshs

How could the morally advanced individual generate a set of personal moral principles, except from the repository of cultural intelligibilities at his/her disposal?

We are thrown onto the stage with a set of stock characters to choose from. Oh adolescence !
For have I not long ago made my choice ? Am I not my own ghost in this decision ?

Quoting Pie

Concision is a fascinating issues. Terseness is typically good (so say the style books), but it can also suggests that the listener is not worth more than a quick remark. Do we find it easier to trust the verbose ? Because their primary motive, being understood, is so clear ? They value us, as ears at least, while the aphorist may take us for a mere target, performing for others at our expense perhaps and not for our illuminate.

To what degree is philosophy caught up in the desire to humiliate ? As Nietzsche might put, the dialogue can be a knife fight.

I agree with you that a concise one liner runs a risk of appearing as a put-down. Story of my life. But then, I personally appreciate conciseness in others, while I tend to intensely dislike verbosity, perhaps unjustly so. A good aphorism is food for much rumination and interrogation -- far more in my mind than a wall of text.

Nietzsche wasn't the last one to draw his blade, and there was something healthy, combative, almost vital in his lack of patience, I think. Life is short.

Quoting Pie

"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)?

Is that the only two options?

Reply to Pie Quoting Pie

. There's a passage in Nietzsche that's similar. So-called 'free will' is perhaps best understood in terms of norms of responsibility. We aren't 'truly' or 'perfectly' free. The strong poet is only ever relatively self-created or novel, relatively path-breaking. Does this not remind you of Heidegger?

So I’ve been in the awkward position these many years of, on the one hand , applauding the social constructionists, post-structuralists and post-analytic types for exploding the myth of the autonomous subject in favor of the socially embedded and linguistically-saturated actor. On the other hand I’ve been trying to show how we can go further in the direction that these postmodern ideas have pointed us ( Gendlin’s did the same with his ‘Beyond Postmodernism’ arguments). Gendlin and Heidegger, I claim, make temporality more fundamental than the social understood as languages interaction. I am beyond myself, exposes to an outside , before and beyond extant cultural
formations. This isnt a retreat back to a form of subject-centered solipsism , but a more radical notion of the social than between person dynamics.

Heidegger, for instance, makes the
average everyday ness of idle talk derivative of a more primary self-understanding of Dasein. He doesn’t say that we interject meanings from a community, but that we convince ourselves that is what we do. In contrast with social constructionism , he doesn’t consider socially imposed conventions a robust form of meaning, but a failure of understanding

Quoting Olivier5

Nietzsche wasn't the last one to draw his blade, and there was something healthy, combative, almost vital in his lack of patience, I think. Life is short.

:up:
We should be tough. An important distinction, in my view, is that between reading the dead and chatting with the living.

Once trust is established, brevity is simply good ?

One can always ask for elaboration after all.

Quoting Pie

One can always ask for elaboration after all.

Yes.

Quoting Pie

An important distinction, in my view, is that between reading the dead and chatting with the living.

Thanks for the aphorism! Although I should ask for elaboration here because I'm not sure I get it. Do you mean that while chatting with the living, we ought to care for their feelings, understanding and impressions a great deal more than when chatting with the dead? That would make a lot of sense.

Quoting Joshs

I am beyond myself, exposes to an outside , before and beyond extant cultural
formations. This isnt a retreat back to a form of subject-centered solipsism , but a more radical notion of the social than between person dynamics.

:up:

To me this makes sense. Dissolving the subject is dissolving all of the subjects. The boundaries and concepts themselves are constantly being negotiated.

Quoting Joshs

pplauding the social constructionists, post-structuralists and post-analytic types for exploding the myth of the autonomous subject in favor of the socially embedded and linguistically-saturated actor.

You know I like the actor metaphor. Is it not strange that we explode that in myth only by wearing it ? 'Normative' rationality is autonomous. Struggling against our having been thrown is fundamental. 'History is [itself] the nightmare from which it is trying to awake.' I am the system trying to slide out itself, as if my unborn future has my unforgiven past as both grave and womb.

Quoting Olivier5

Do you mean that while chatting with the living, we ought to care for their feelings, understanding and impressions a great deal more than when chatting with the dead?

Basically. We know that Nietzsche, to name an aggressive aphorist, is not trying to insult or trick us. There is no trust or failure of trust involved. The living however are perhaps compulsively interpreted by us as friend, foe, or indeterminate. While a certain combativeness or competitiveness may serve the pursuit of better beliefs, I speculate that too much just locks everyone up in their safe space, only able to repeat what they find obvious or not. And it's just not fun if fucking everyone is a enemy. We like teamwork ! Primordially social and collaborative...

Quoting creativesoul

Is that the only two options?

No. Just an icebreaker. I actually don't think truth is a property. I like the redundancy / prosentential approach.

Reply to Pie

:smile:

Quoting Olivier5

Thanks for the aphorism!

:smile:

Reply to Pie

So, I take it that you agree that "is true" adds nothing meaningful to a sincere belief statement? That truth is presupposed within belief statements?

Quoting Joshs

Heidegger, for instance, makes the
average everyday ness of idle talk derivative of a more primary self-understanding of Dasein.

Could you elaborate ? I tend to model the situation in terms of the social as the bottom most layer. I am fundamentally one of or a piece of us. The tribal language and form of life is my operating system, deeper than the performance of individuality that it makes possible. (Descartes was a shallow thinker from this perspective, taking the top layer for granted, ignoring that it's language that cannot be doubted intelligibly, not some mere ideological product thereof like the self.

Quoting creativesoul

So, I take it that you agree that "is true" adds nothing meaningful to a sincere belief statement? That truth is presupposed within belief statements?

That's it, yes. "P is true" is "P", tho @Isaac makes the fair point that "true" is meaningful in terms of emphasis and I guess therefore pragmatics.

Quoting Pie

So, I take it that you agree that "is true" adds nothing meaningful to a sincere belief statement? That truth is presupposed within belief statements?
— creativesoul

That's it, yes. "P is true" is "P"...

Yep. So long as we do not mistakenly take that farther and claim that all belief are equivalent to "P". They are not.

Quoting Pie

Further, our way of being in the world is not limited to the linguistic, to what we say or think or talk about or conceptualize.
— Fooloso4

Tell me more.

This should be quite obvious to anyone not seduced by philosophy.

Quoting Pie

Are we to constantly celebrate the Priority Of Feeling And Sensation or the Ineffable Priority of Real Life within otherwise dry conversations about epistemological and semantic concepts ?

I said nothing about the priority of feeling and sensation. But I will say that they are temporally prior.

Nor did I say anything about ineffability.

Quoting Pie

Like I said, good common sense, which leads nevertheless to endless confusion. We can assign an X marks the ineffable spot if you like, but that's why I call this view Kantian.

Again with the ineffable? My view is not Kantian. Let me try again:

Quoting Fooloso4

... what I talk about and what is are not the same.

What if someone 50, 100, 150 years ago said this? How much of our present reality would have been left out what was talked about? And now?

Quoting Joshs

Rather, so long as we continue the normal process of creating consensus around what is real and good, classes of the undesirable are under construction.

:up:

Good point, but I want to respond to something else.

You joked about being an alien or a cat in another thread. I relate to this. There's a mode of being that looks amoral to a 'committed' outsider. One 'ought not' understand the criminal. One 'ought not' be too transcendent or detached. This is the 'good' part in Stirner who is wretched when digested politically.

Harold Bloom claims that Hamlet really loved no one.

Quoting Pie

P is true is just fancy talk for P.

But P talks about truth, as well. Or denotation. It says, e.g., "white" denotes snow, i.e. "white" is true of snow, or snow satisfies "white".

Plausibly.

And, "true" denotes "snow is white" iff "white" denotes snow.

Thus defining true as a predicate, in terms of is-true-of or denotes.

Quoting Pie

While a certain combativeness or competitiveness may serve the pursuit of better beliefs, I speculate that too much just locks everyone up in their safe space, only able to repeat what they find obvious or not.

As you might know already, to be locked in one's metaphysics forever is a very human thing to do, all the more so when such metaphysics and its motivators remain unconscious to us, outside any possible examination, while framing all our thoughts. So while I agree with you that deftness and diplomacy are good things in day to day business, eg to secure collaboration around shared goals, I am not totally convinced that the approach would work any better than 'combativeness' in a philosophic debate.

Quoting Pie

We know that Nietzsche is not trying to insult or trick us. There is no trust or failure of trust involve.

I actually think some authors are trying to trick their readers, even beyond death!

Quoting Fooloso4

This should be quite obvious to anyone not seduced by philosophy.

Dude. Seriously ? Windmills.

Quoting Fooloso4

Again with the ineffable? My view is not Kantian. Let me try again:

Quoting Fooloso4

... what I talk about and what is are not the same.

Tell me what is then.

Quoting Fooloso4

I said nothing about the priority of feeling and sensation.

I was just guessing on that one.

Quoting bongo fury

But P talks about truth, as well.

Earlier I contemplated <

is true > is true>. I believe idempotent is the technical term. It seems to work in this simple case at least.

Quoting Olivier5

all the more so when such metaphysics and its motivators remain unconscious to us, outside any possible examination, while framing all our thoughts.

:up:

That reminds me of what I'd call a 'deep metaphor' theory, and which I'd associate with Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The stuff that binds all of us is just clear water (for us.) But the stuff that binds most of us is, I claim, what the greats, among other things, make explicit and therefore optional. (That which is closest is hardest to see, like forgetting your glasses are on your nose.)

Quoting Olivier5

I am not totally convinced that the approach would work any better than 'combativeness' in a philosophic debate.

I think we pretty much agree. The desire to humiliate I mentioned may actually be good for us. We punish one another for dishonesty or irrelevance or incoherence. We simultaneously enforce tribal norms and attempt installing new ones.

Quoting Olivier5

I actually think some authors are trying to trick their readers, even beyond death!

I'll grant you that. But I don't think it hurts our feelings the same way.

Nabokov wrote that the real conflict was always between the author and the reader. In our late age of Netflix and having seen it all, this seems especially true. 'Surprise me or fuck off.'

Quoting bongo fury

And, "true" denotes "snow is white" iff "white" denotes snow.

Is this a Fregean idea ?

It jars my intuition, but I'm willing to hear the case.

Quoting Joshs

For are we not all...akin to polyphonic novels, speaking in multiple voices, reflecting multiple traditions?

:up:

Reply to creativesoul
So what's your preferred understanding of truth ?

Reply to Pie Quoting Pie

Could you elaborate ? I tend to model the situation in terms of the social as the bottom most layer. I am fundamentally one of or a piece of us. The tribal language and form of life is my operating system, deeper than the performance of individuality that it makes possible. (Descartes was a shallow thinker from this perspective, taking the top layer for granted, ignoring that it's language that cannot be doubted intelligibly, not some mere ideological product thereof like the self.

I’m going to be lazy and quite the last 4 pages of my paper:

If Dasein's being-in-the -world is always structured as an intimate, pragmatic self-belongingness, how does Heidegger explain the basis of apparently normatively driven intersubjective ‘we' contexts? Heidegger's most systematic treatment of Dasein's role in a linguistic community appears in his discussion of average everydayness and das man in Being and Time.

Zahavi is among those thinkers who interpret Heidegger's ‘we-self' of every day das man as taking precedence over his authentic self of ‘ownmost' possibilities. As das man , Zahavi claims

“group belongingness, rather than being founded upon an other-experience, preceded any such experience.”

“...an everyday being-with-one-another characterized by anonymity and substitutability, where others are those from whom “one mostly does not distinguish oneself” (Heidegger 1996: 11)

He surmises that Heidegger would approve of Schmid's(2005) assertion that “...the we, the “sense of us” or “plural self-awareness,” precedes the distinction between yours and mine, is prior to any form of intersubjectivity or mutual recognition, and is itself the irreducible basis for joint action and communication.”

Zahavi is far from alone in interpreting Heidegger's discussions of the discursive practices of Das man as assuming an introjection of norms by a socially created self or a socially conditioned self-affecting subjectivity. Heidegger's critique of Husserl's model of empathy was taken by many interpreters as evidence that the primacy of being-with for Dasein functions as the conditioning of a self by an outside.

For instance, Rousse(2014) says

“...the particular way I ‘carry out' my being and relate to myself is unavoidably susceptible to the pressures of the others' normative expectations.””... inauthenticity is a matter of a person having his practical orientation dominated by ‘outside forces',...the tacitly operative normative expectations about how one ought properly and normally to behave.” “ Dasein, as essentially ‘being-with', initially ‘gets' its existential answerability by being socialized into the shared behavioral norms of the One. In turn, this enables, even encourages, Dasein to act in accordance with them and to avoid taking its own (‘existentiell') answerability for how it comports and understands itself. To be responsible, then, is to be the kind of agent who has the possibility to take responsibility for the socially normative determinants of identity.”

By taking for granted the notion of normativity as a shared understanding, Rousse exemplifies the kind of thinking that Heidegger says disguises, covers over, conceals and obscures a genuine understanding. Das man isn't a matter of simply acting in accordance with norms that are communally understood but a way of thinking that pre-supposes and takes for granted that the self can internalize and introject meanings from others. Public interpretedness is not about behaving in accordance with culturally assimilated norms but believing that norms exist as the sharing of unambiguously intelligible meanings in the first place.

Rousse misreads authenticity as a self-reflexive self's becoming aware of what it has introjected, ‘taken in' from culture and its attempt to take responsibility for, or embrace its own alternative to, those norms. But for Heidegger what the self discloses to itself in average everydayness is not introjected meanings from a community. The self never simply introjects from an outside to an inside. The radically temporal structuration of Dasein makes such introjection impossible.

Heidegger's(2010) task is to explain how a Dasein which always understands others in relation to its very own pragmatic totality of relevance ends up believing in a cultural world of linguistic practices that appear to be the same for all. “...what purports to be an opening up of the world is in fact its concealment: by appealing to public opinion and tradition, idle talk creates in Dasein the belief that it possesses universally acknowledged and thus genuine truths.”

Heidegger chooses words like average, vague, flattened , confused, uprooted state of suspension, and ambiguous to describe Dasein's being as Das Man, to indicate that the heedfulness of Care is still primordially and implicitly operative even when it is explicitly concealed and suppressed . Average everyday discourse has to be vague, approximate, superficial and ambiguous enough to conceal, disguise, cover over, miss, obscure, suppress the fact that the meaning of what is shared is never interpreted identically for each dasein.

“What is talked about is understood only approximately and superficially. One means the same thing because it is in the same averageness that we have a common understanding of what is said.” “Publicness ” does not get to "the heart of the matter," because it is insensitive to every difference of level and genuineness.”

“Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without any previous appropriation of the matter. Idle talk, which everyone can snatch up, not only divests us of the task of genuine understanding, but develops an indifferent intelligibility for which nothing is closed off any longer. Discourse, which belongs to the essential constitution of being of Dasein, and also constitutes its disclosedness, has the possibility of becoming idle talk, and as such of not really keeping being-in-the-world open in an articulated understanding, but of closing it off and covering over inner worldly beings. “ “ Ontologically, this means that when Da-sein maintains itself in idle talk, it is-as being-in-the-world-cut off from the primary and primordially genuine relations of being toward the world, toward Mitda-sein, toward being-in itself.”

“Idle talk conceals simply because of its characteristic failure to address things in an originary way [urspriinglichen Ansprechens]. It obscures the true appearance of the world and the events in it by instituting a dominant view [herrschende Ansicht].”“Usually and for the most part the ontic mode of being-in (discoverture) is concealment [Verdeckung]. Interpretedness, which is speech encrusted by idle talk, draws any given Dasein into 'one's' way of being. But existence in the 'one' now entails the concealment and marginalization of the genuine self [eigentlichen Selbst]. Not only has each particular given itself over to 'one', 'one' blocks Dasein's access to the state it finds itself in [Befindlichkeit].”(Heidegger 2011)

What is this genuine self, this genuine understanding, this originary and primordial way of appropriating the matter, this “getting to the heart of the matter”, these primordially genuine relations of being toward the world, toward Mitda-sein, toward being-in itself, that idle talk conceals?

To say that in the mode of average everydayness Dasein disguises, covers over, conceals, obscures its genuine self, a genuine understanding, an originary and primordial way of appropriating the matter, “getting to the heart of the matter,” primordially genuine relations of being toward the world, toward Mit-dasein, toward being-in itself, is to say that Dasein explicitly experiences itself as a constituted self, introjecting norms from other selves , but this awareness pre-supposes and is grounded in an implicit mineness.

Average everydayness of Das man and idle talk shares with what Heidegger calls the ‘present to hand‘ the features of being derivative modes of the ‘as' structure of heedful circumspective significance, functioning as a contextually rich totality of relevance. They also share the feature of being a ‘dwindling down' of that wider experience.

Even as Zahavi mistakenly critiques Heidegger for giving precedence to “plural self-awareness,” over the distinction between yours and mine, Zahavi's I-Thou model of sociality falls under the scope of Heidegger's formulation of Das Man.

Zahavi(2012) says “The I and the you are prior to the we”. The I-you relation “is a reciprocal exchange of address and response that affects and transforms the self experience of the participating individuals... we take over from others (and make our own) a language, roles, attitudes and norms”.

This makes individual behavior in social situations the product of narrative norms, reciprocities, shared practices and social constraints. The presupposition here is that my own subjectivity always functions as a harbor in the reception of social signs . Intersubjectivity is characterized by a reciprocal cobbling and co-ordination between personal history and cultural signs in which the ‘joints' of such interactive bodily-mental and social practices are simultaneously within my own subjectivity and common to other participants in my community. Zahavi assumes these culturally normed practices that we internalize represent forms of meaning no less robust in significance and relevance to our lives than those which we generate.

In contrast, for Heidegger the social norms and practices that Dasein takes in are specific modifications of meaning on the order of a diminution of significance. The publicness of Das Man and the present to handness of things are modes of Dasein representing a deprivation and trivialization of intelligibility, significance and relevance, and thus a reduction of meaningfulness. Dasein becomes alienated from itself not by being taken over by, introjecting and internalizing an outside but by encountering itself (its ownmost world of possibilities) as almost devoid of sense. This is self-alienation as senselessness rather than internalization of an other.

“However, alienation cannot mean that Da-sein is factically torn away from itself....this alienation, which closes off to Da-sein its authenticity and possibility, even if only that of genuinely getting stranded, still does not surrender it to beings which it itself is not, but forces it into its inauthenticity, into a possible kind of being of itself.”(Heidegger 2010)

Zahavi's belief that socialization is a direct introjection and internalization from an outside marks it from Heidegger's vantage as an inauthentic and confused self-understanding, even if we assume with Zahavi that the subject is an active participant in what it takes in from others( I-Thou).

World-understanding as Dasein-understanding is self-understanding. Self and world belong together in the single entity, the Dasein. Self and world are not two beings, like subject and object, or like I and thou, but self and world are the basic determination of the Dasein itself in the unity of the structure of being-in-the-world. (Heidegger 1982)

We saw earlier how for Husserl the alterity and foreignness of other egos is constituted as a variation of my own thematics, via aperceptive transfer. Heidegger understands thematic mineness through the Care structure. Heidegger says average everydayness alienates Dasein from itself, but without Dasein's therefore being merely conditioned by others.

My being-with-others originates primordially as ‘my ownmost' being-with , relative to my significant aims and goals, to what matters to me. As the inauthentic mode of average everydayness communication become flattened, leveled down into the vagueness of a ‘we' understanding, but this average everydayness does not eliminate but only covers over the originary ‘mineness' of the Care structure of primordial temporality.

The ‘solitude' of the mineness of the self of Dasein is disclosed most fundamentally for Heidegger in the authentic mood of angst. Angst individualizes and thus discloses Da-sein as "solus ipse." This existential "solipsism," however, is so far from transposing an isolated subject-thing into the harmless vacuum of a worldless occurrence that it brings Da-sein in an extreme sense precisely before its world as world, and thus itself before itself as being-in-the-world.“ "Together with the sober Angst that brings us before our individualized potentiality-of-being, goes the unshakable joy in this possibility.”

As much as it is the case that Heidegger's being-with-others is not the precedence of anonymous plural self-awareness over Dasein's ownness, it is equally true that Dasein's self-belonging is not a retreat from the immediate contingency of world-exposure, not the choosing of an idealist self-actualization at the expense of robust being with others. Gallagher and Gadamer's readings of Heidegger appear to fall prey to such a solipsist interpretation.

Gallagher(2010) says: “In Heidegger, and in thinkers who follow his line of thought, we find the idea that a relatively complete account of our embodied, expert, enactive, pragmatic engagements with the world can be given prior to or without reference to intersubjectivity.”

Gadamer(2006) writes:

“Mit-sein, for Heidegger, was a concession that he had to make, but one that he never really got behind. Indeed, even as he was developing the idea, he wasn't really talking about the other at all. Mit-sein is, as it were, an assertion about Dasein, which must naturally take Mit-sein for granted..."Care" [die Sorge] is always a concernfulness [ein Besorgtsein] about one's own being, and Mit-sein is, in truth, a very weak idea of the other, more a "letting the other be" than an authentic "being-interested-in-him."”

Zahavi, Gallagher and Gadamer are right and wrong in their readings of Heidegger. Gallagher and Gadamer are right that Heidegger makes their notion of primary intersubjectivity a derivative modification of the primary self-understanding of Dasein. But they are wrong to interpret Dasein's self-understanding as prior to sociality. Being-with is instead the very site of sociality as a referential differential inside-outside. Zahavi is right that Heidegger places being-with as prior to Zahavi's model of pre-reflective self-awareness, but Zahavi is wrong in treating Das Man as an anonymous plural self. As a referential differential it is a more intimate notion of self- relation than Zahavi's present-to-hand oppositional subject-object structure.

Heidegger's ‘ownmost' shows that a profound irreducible intimacy of relation between self and world reveals itself once idealized binaries like inside-outside, internal-external, the meeting of an in-itself and a for-itself have been deconstructed. A central implication of this thinking for the understanding of intersubjectivity is that while our experience as individuals is characterized by stable relations of relative belonging or alienation with respect to other individuals and groups, the site of this interactivity, whether we find ourselves in greater or lesser agreement with a world within which we are enmeshed, has a character of peculiar self-belonging and ownership. It also has a character of relentless creative activity that undermines and overflows attempts to understand human action based on between-person reciprocities. We may identify to a greater or lesser extent with various larger paradigmatic communities, delicately united by intertwining values. But the contribution of each member of a community to the whole would not originate at the level of spoken or bodily language interchange among voices; such constructs repress as much as they reveal. Even in a community of five individuals in a room, I, as participant, can perceive a locus of integrity undergirding the participation of each of the others to the responsive conversation. In my dealings with other persons, I would be able to discern a thread of continuity organizing their participation in dialogue with me, dictating the manner and extent to which I can be said to influence their thinking and they mine. My thinking can not properly be seen as `determined' by his response, and his ideas are not simply `shaped' by my contribution to our correspondence.

I can only shape my actions to fit socially legitimate goals or permitted institutionalized grammatical forms to the extent that those goals or forms can be understood by me as relevant to my ongoing experience. Even then, what is understood by me is not `the' social forms, but aspects hidden within these so-called forms which are unique to the totality of relevance of my perspective; what I perceive as socially `permitted' rhetorical argumentation is already tylistically distinctive in relation to what other participants perceive as permitted. Each individual who feels belonging to an extent in a larger ethico-political collectivity perceives that collectivity's functions in a unique, but peculiarly coherent way relative to their own history, even when they believe that in moving forward in life their strategic language moves are guided by the constraints imposed by essentially the `same' discursive conventions as the others in their speech community.

Quoting Pie

Is this a Fregean idea ?

Not that I recall.

I'm not sure it's unobjectionable.

I remember thinking something like it when trying to grasp Tarski's expositions. So if it's not badly wrong it'll be from there.

If it seems alien, I can get supporting sentiments from Goodman and Quine, I think.

Quine: Word and Object, p 90n.:Woodger's term, p.17, is 'shared name'. Martin, in Truth and Denotation, Ch. IV, speaks of divided reference as multiple denotation. I applaud that use of 'denote', having so used the word myself until deflected to 'true of' by readers' misunderstanding; and Martin's 'multiple' obviates the misunderstanding.

Ah and this is what reminded me:
Quoting SEP

Truth for singular sentences, consisting of a name and an arbitrarily complex predicate, is defined thus: A singular sentence is true iff the object denoted by the name satisfies the predicate. Logical machinery provided by Tarski (1935) can be used to turn this simplified sketch into a more general definition of truth—a definition that handles sentences containing relational predicates and quantifiers and covers molecular sentences as well. Whether Tarski’s own definition of truth can be regarded as a correspondence definition, even in this modified sense, is under debate (cf. Popper 1972; Field 1972, 1986; Kirkham 1992, chaps. 5-6; Soames 1999; Künne 2003, chap. 4; Patterson 2008.)

Quoting Joshs

Dasein's self-belonging is not a retreat from the immediate contingency of world-exposure, not the choosing of an idealist self-actualization at the expense of robust being with others.

:up:

:up: Quoting Joshs

what I perceive as socially `permitted' rhetorical argumentation is already stylistically distinctive in relation to what other participants perceive as permitted. Each individual who feels belonging to an extent in a larger ethico-political collectivity perceives that collectivity's functions in a unique, but peculiarly coherent way relative to their own history, even when they believe that in moving forward in life their strategic language moves are guided by the constraints imposed by essentially the `same' discursive conventions as the others in their speech community.

:up:

I liked this closing especially. Relevant to us here, yes? We don't see the norms the same way, correct ? We can even pretend they are clearer than they are while trying to establish them. I'd say that we update our sense of the norms in play constantly. Each move in the game and its result is a fresh clue about what is acceptable and charming and what is the opposite. Complete conformity is bland mediocrity. In our individualistic culture, the right kind of sin is virtue itself, or the glamorous kind at least. In a less narcissistic key, the deepest and most joyful sociality lives in dancing on the edges, in a play that is not quote innocent and anything but rote. It is two children running off into the woods on the edge of the village. Or more than two perhaps. Groups of musicians (an experimental rock band maybe) who are also close friends...also go there. The edge is made possible by that which is taken for granted. In the same way, poetry builds a metrical expectation in order to violate it skillfully.


Maybe we agree: the self is not 'injected' with norms. (This metaphor might work for the body. ) The performance of the responsible self is 'itself' normal. What 'I' am or include is not given beforehand but itself at stake. Small wonder that Nietzsche contemplated will to power and expansion and a 'false' making-equal as its tool.

Reply to bongo fury
I never studied Frege closely, but I thought he cast the meaning or reference (or something) of propositions as True or False. Maybe someone can chime in.

Quoting bongo fury

And, "true" denotes "snow is white" iff "white" denotes snow.

My intuition would be that 'true' would merely describe and not denote in that case. Could be a terminological difference/preference.

Reply to Pie

Me neither, but I gather he invented sense vs reference, with the latter pointing to true or false as you describe. So?

Reply to bongo fury

I guess I wouldn't say that white denotes snow.

I'd just say that "snow is white" is true if snow is white.

Quoting Pie

My intuition would be that 'true' would merely describe and not denote in that case.

Same difference. In Quine (see above), Goodman, Elgin.

Denotes, describes, applies to, refers to, points to, ...

Quoting bongo fury

Same difference. In Quine, Goodman, Elgin.

OK, so it was just terminological habit/expectation.

Quoting Pie

I'd just say that "snow is white" is true if snow is white.

Yes, which is deflationary, and what could possibly be wrong with that! Well, it's a bit smug, if there's stuff to say about how a sentence refers to other stuff. And mystical, if we end up equivocating between truth-bearing sentence and truth-making state. Which I'm quite sure none of us ever would...

Reply to bongo fury
Yeah it could be smug or mystical. But it's basically Hegel, so...no surprise ? Is it a bug or a feature ?

Reply to Pie

Bug.

Quoting bongo fury

Which I'm quite sure none of us ever would...

To me the alternative is an indeterminate X for everything that exists non-linguistically.

So it's 'Hegel' or 'Kant,' which may be like choosing a red tie or a blue tie. (I never wear ties, so wtf?)

Reply to bongo fury
A bit like the 'ghost' at the heard of the hard problem. It's there, I guess, maybe, but there's nothing to be said about it. It's the hole in a doughnut, getting its sense in the first place from that which is public and articulated surrounding it.

The 'Kant' approach is truer to our total cognition and common sense. Granted. But the 'Hegel' approach is purer, focused on what we can and actually do work with. Claims.

Reply to Pie

I'm offering denotation (of sentence-parts) as a better way (to examine how language relates or corresponds with bits of reality) than truth of whole sentences.

Reply to bongo fury

That helps. Brandom claims that the original pre-Kantian approach was in terms of parts rather than whole sentences, and that Kant's achievement was recognizing that we can only take responsibility for assertions, complete sentences, and not their parts (individual concepts). To be sure, responsibility and the normative are not the only way in. But I do confess my infatuation with inferentialism at the moment.

On the other hand, my training is in math, so I can relate to caring about the meaning of parts and building from there.

Reply to bongo fury
Let's see. So you want to link nouns to objects maybe ? Independently of the claims they appear in?

Quoting bongo fury

And, "true" denotes "snow is white" iff "white" denotes snow.

Quoting Pie

Is this a Fregean idea ?

Quoting bongo fury

Not that I recall.

Looks to be an extensional interpretation...

Quoting Wiki:Extension (predicate logic)

The extension of a predicate – a truth-valued function – is the set of tuples of values that, used as arguments, satisfy the predicate. Such a set of tuples is a relation.

For example, the statement "d2 is the weekday following d1" can be seen as a truth function associating to each tuple (d2, d1) the value true or false. The extension of this truth function is, by convention, the set of all such tuples associated with the value true, i.e.

{(Monday, Sunday),
(Tuesday, Monday),
(Wednesday, Tuesday),
(Thursday, Wednesday),
(Friday, Thursday),
(Saturday, Friday),
(Sunday, Saturday)}

By examining this extension we can conclude that "Tuesday is the weekday following Saturday" (for example) is false.

Such interpretations are easy to work with, but lack nuance. Intensional logics allow terms to designate different things under different conditions, and different terms to designate the same thing - "the morning star" and "the evening star", as in possible world semantics.

Or something like that. the salient point here is that a purely extensional interpretation has its limits.

Quoting Pie

So you want to link nouns to objects maybe ?

Of course. And variables to their values (which are things out there, not more language).

And so on.

Quoting Banno

extensional

Yes, or even nominalist ("hyper-extensionalist" in Goodman's rhetoric).

I feel a diagram coming on, tomorrow.

Quoting Isaac

I think we use 'true' and 'truth' to carry an awful lot more meaning that T-sentences encompass.

Oh, sure. I left the pragmatics as obvious, since we are focusing here on truth vales.

Quoting Isaac

It's used to persuade, not identify.

Of course it is, as the pomos will and ought tell us. But equally, it only has this power of persuasion because of it's logical implications. So getting those right is where one might best start.

Reply to Sam26 I've a keen interest in reconciling Wittgenstein and Davidson. Been at it since I were a lad. In a way Davidson's semantic theory might be a more recent and sophisticated version of the formalisation of language found in the Tractatus, an attempt to explicate what is important in our natural languages by setting out the conditions under which our utterances are true.

Jeff Malpas's Stanford article is a good place to start. See the section on Meaning and Truth.

Quoting bongo fury

Of course. And variables to values (which are things out there, not more language).

And so on.

It's my understanding that Carnap was wild about this stuff and that he worked out complex systems.

Reply to Fooloso4 While I appreciate your efforts, I'm too far removed from Hegel to see the relevance of your explication. You've lost me.

Quoting bongo fury

And so on.

It definitely has its place.

I think maybe the same criticism applies to it though. The noun 'is' the object as intelligible. Folks like to say that the map is not the territory. I understand what they mean well enough. But from my 'Hegelian' position we just have in that aphorism a reminder than or beliefs might not be true.

In other words, maps are beliefs and the territory is all that is the case or just the facts. (From this POV, the maps 'are' sometimes the territory, but we can't be sure...there is no non-mappy territory.) (I think you already understand this position.)

Quoting unenlightened

what is needed is an account of falsehood, which is parasitic on a community of truth tellers.

I like this notion.

But is it not also possible to wesponise the value of truth to no less a degree?

Your talk of eagles and snakes is spot on. If I say "we've run out of cake" just to keep more for myself I'm being 'parasitic' on the generally truth-telling community.

But most claims we could attach to this social necessity to are not of that nature.

We're rarely talking to each other about hidden cakes. Mostly we're exchanging beliefs about way more complex propositions. Russia, Covid, Trump, Brexit, Global Warming...
Here we're clearly not using 'true' the same way. We're using it closer to the lying monkey. We really, really want others to adhere to our solutions.

The simple (eagles and snakes) version of 'truth' is secondary because we don't believe what we believe about those matters because we've done the equivalent of looking in the fridge, we do so because of who we trust, our faith in statistics, beliefs about the intentions of institutions...

So whilst I agree with you, I'm not sure how far it applies socially. Lying is parasitic on truth, that's for sure, but for me to get to the idea that lying is...

Quoting unenlightened

destructive of meaning of society and of our world.

...I'd have to see a stronger argument that matters of eagles and snakes, of cake in the fridge, actually impact all that much on meaning on society, because it seems to me at first glance, that the vast majority of societal functions and meanings depend overwhelmingly on concepts and belief so complex that 'truth' and 'lie' just don't really apply.

Quoting Banno

it only has this power of persuasion because of it's logical implications.

Does it though? I can still see the pragmatist winning here too. I believe the story I'm told "It's true, it's true!" because of the social implications of someone using such an expression. It's often better for me that way, things are more likely to work out how I expect them under that policy.

If we trust the speaker, and we trust their judgment then isn't what we're really doing simply 'contracting out' our own expediency-obsessed inference processes to someone else's. I'm not seeing an escape from mere expediency there.

In other words, I don't take notice of "it's true" because of its logical implications. I take notice of it because of yet more expediency. It simply works out better for me under such a policy.

Reply to Isaac Seems as any pragmatic virtue truth accrues is a result of that logic. The redundancy of truth lends itself to an obvious rhetorical response: "So you say truth can't escape from mere expediency? is that true?"

Whatever you posit as a theory of truth already relies on a foundation of truth...

The conceptual knot is apparent when one finally separates truth form belief.

Quoting Pie

The stuff that binds all of us is just clear water (for us.) But the stuff that binds most of us is, I claim, what the greats, among other things, make explicit and therefore optional. (That which is closest is hardest to see, like forgetting your glasses are on your nose.)

Quoting Pie

We punish one another for dishonesty or irrelevance or incoherence. We simultaneously enforce tribal norms and attempt installing new ones.

I used to think of it more or less along those lines until recently. Now my take follows Collingwood, whom I discovered thanks to @tim wood. It's not very different but more precise and informed by history, hence more dynamic and even political. Collingwood was a historian. He formalized this problem in a very clear and convincing manner in his Essay on Metaphysics, showing how our world view and 'absolute presuppositions' have been constantly changing over the course of history (down to very mundane things like the colors we see) under the influence of philosophy or religion, and how conflict-ridden and brutal this evolution was, sometimes.

He concludes that metaphysics are "ticklish". By that he means that a person whose metaphysics are challenged would typically become rather aggressive towards the challenger.

I found his analysis convincing, and believe it does explain why there tends to be some aggressiveness in philosophy, contrary to a naïve cliché of the serene philosopher. Philosophy cuts deep, and it hurts. A philosopher is only serene to the extent that his or her metaphysics remains unchallenged.

Quoting Banno

Whatever you posit as a theory of truth already relies on a foundation of truth...

:up:

Quoting Banno

"So you say truth can't escape from mere expediency? is that true?"

Whatever you posit as a theory of truth already relies on a foundation of truth...

I don't see how. If I say "Rory Gallagher is the best guitarist ever, it's true" do you really think the meaning of 'it's true' there relies on any kind of logic? I'm just emphasising my belief.

So why need "Truth can't escape from mere expediency, it's true" be any different?

You're assuming we're all playing a certain type of game, but I don't see any reason why we must be, and most times seems to me we aren't.

Quoting Joshs

While conservatives and modernists debate which side is rational or irrational, and what foreign(French) influence to blame for it, postmodernists assert that it is not irrationality that leads to fascisms and totalitarianisms but rigid or one-dimensional notions of the rational and the true.

But is that true? Are you telling the truth about postmodernists, and are they telling the truth about totalitarianisms? I say if it is not true, then it is not meaningful and we are not even debating together.

Quoting Isaac

...I'd have to see a stronger argument that matters of eagles and snakes, of cake in the fridge, actually impact all that much on meaning on society, because it seems to me at first glance, that the vast majority of societal functions and meanings depend overwhelmingly on concepts and belief so complex that 'truth' and 'lie' just don't really apply.

Consider, then, the case of the scientist who fabricates the results of his experiment. Imagine that this becomes endemic to the extent of near 50 % of published papers. Science, surely then, is dead, it has become completely unreliable and thus meaningless.

Incidentally, I make the same argument for direct realism, that deception must always be the exception and not the rule, because if deception were the rule, then the senses would have no value or use to the organism, and like sight in the darkness of a cave, evolution would produce blindness in favour of a more reliable sense. there can be wolves in sheep's clothing, but as a rule it must be sheep in sheep's clothing, otherwise we would call it 'wolves clothing' wouldn't we?

Quoting Banno

I've a keen interest in reconciling Wittgenstein and Davidson. Been at it since I were a lad. In a way Davidson's semantic theory might be a more recent and sophisticated version of the formalisation of language found in the Tractatus, an attempt to explicate what is important in our natural languages by setting out the conditions under which our utterances are true.

I've already started reading about Davidson in the SEP, so yes, that's where I've started. I'd rather start with primary sources, but that's a lot to wade through, so this will have to do. Generally speaking I'm not a fan of Davidson, so I'm already starting with a certain bias, but that's because I think Wittgenstein, even with his faults, is a far better philosopher in my opinion. I don't think that the early or later Wittgenstein would agree with Davidson's semantic theory. However, Wittgenstein's early philosophy is much more in line with the kind of analytic philosophy that Davidson is doing, but in saying that, I'm not saying that there is much overlap, although some.

If you want to understand Wittgenstein, don't look at him through the eyes of others, which is difficult, because we usually start by reading what others have written as a guide to get a general feel for a philosophers thinking. Moreover, this is all I'm bringing to the table in terms of Davidson, a general feel for his philosophy, because I haven't read much Davidson.

My impression so far, is that Davidson went his own way in developing a theory of semantics. And, I don't believe that your going to be able to reconcile Wittgenstein with Davidson unless you do some fancy interpretative moves (aka spin). These kinds of interpretative moves will probably lead you away from Wittgenstein's thinking, not closer to it. This isn't to say that there isn't some overlap, because there is, but Wittgenstein is one thing, and Davidson is quite another.

My suggestion, for those of you who have a background in philosophy, and of course are interested, is that you concentrate on Wittgenstein (except for background information, for e.g., vis a vis Frege and Russell), if you want to understand Wittgenstein.

I was thinking about starting a thread on Davidson, but I don't know if I'm mentally up for it. :yikes:

Quoting unenlightened

Consider, then, the case of the scientist who fabricates the results of his experiment. Imagine that this becomes endemic to the extent of near 50 % of published papers. Science, surely then, is dead, it has become completely unreliable and thus meaningless.

Yeah, totally. The results one gets are like the cake in the fridge. If you know they're one thing when you say they're another, you're lying.

Do you seriously think even remotely close to 50% of scientists could get away with lying about their results? The conspiracy would have to be enormous.

But even so, my point still stands. Most of the propositions 'truth' is considered a property of to are not spoken by the scientist who obtained the results. They're spoken by others. So 'truth' means "I trust/believe this scientist, not that one"

Truth is hard to pin down. Deceit isn't. Our senses feed our brain "reality" and as such are solely responsible for any and all understanding of or acquaintanceship with it. Sometimes they can be defective or altered (delusions, hallucinations, dreams). Who's to say all humans aren't, compared to what could be. Relative truth, that is to say a statement free of deception relative to the speaker that stands up to whatever scrutiny a man has learned in his short, short lifetime to be able to throw at it may be able to be ascertained by a certain formula, but absolute truth something that existed before the first number and would exist after the last intelligent thought I suspect is where things get a bit tricky.

Quoting Isaac

Do you seriously think even remotely close to 50% of scientists could get away with lying about their results? The conspiracy would have to be enormous.

No, but what I am saying is that we are seeing science being hijacked by commercial interests to some extent, and by career considerations, and so on, and that fuels conspiracy theories and radical scepticism. There cannot be a complete collapse of faith and a complete collapse of meaning, because the lie loses meaning at the same rate as the truth. But people stop listening - they stop listening to the media, to the government, even to each other. not completely, but more and more - society is collapsing because society runs on trust and trust depends on honesty.

I think it is rather important that philosophers begin to understand this and take account of it in their theories of language, truth, knowledge, and so on. A sort of naive physicalism has taken root that has led to such nonsenses as 'there is no such thing as society' - and a pervasive moral nihilism that the human race may well not survive.

Quoting Pie

P is true is just fancy talk for P.

Quoting bongo fury

"true" denotes "snow is white" iff "white" denotes snow.

Went with describes, but denotes may less jarring for the naming by quotation.

I may be asking for trouble with the dotted arrows anyway.

Trouble welcome.

Quoting Pie

This should be quite obvious to anyone not seduced by philosophy.
— Fooloso4
Dude. Seriously ? Windmills

Do you not have a body?

.. what I talk about and what is are not the same.
— Fooloso4

Tell me what is then.

In response to the claim that there is more to reality than what we talk about, you ask for more talk, for me to tell you what is. Have you seen the images of the Webb telescope? Seeing into the past is something we can talk about, but what is seen are not things that have ever been talked about. Things that existed billions of years before there was anyone to talk.

Quoting unenlightened

No, but what I am saying is that we are seeing science being hijacked by commercial interests to some extent, and by career considerations, and so on, and that fuels conspiracy theories and radical scepticism.

Absolutely, and we should all be deeply concerned about that, but is truth relevant here? Do the hijacked scientists actually lie, or do they pick their results carefully, craft their statistics, twist their wording...to support the narrative the commercial interests prefer?

I think talk of truth here is the problem, not the solution. Talk of scientific theories being 'true' and all the dogmatism around that approach is part of what's caused the failure of trust. The making of promises one cannot keep. 'Truth' doesn't much belong in scientific discussion at all (only perhaps to keep out actual fraudsters). Quality matters. Things like experimental power (in the statistical sense) are important.

We have to trust our institutions where we defer to experts whose actual opinion we're not capable of judging. I agree with you about the threat this represents to society. I think the solution, though, is more acknowledgement of uncertainty, more openness about modeling assumptions, more discussion of theory choice (where the evidence underdetermines)...

In other words, less talk of truth and lies. More talk of pragmatism and expediency.

Quoting Isaac

Do the hijacked scientists actually lie, or do they pick their results carefully, craft their statistics, twist their wording...to support the narrative the commercial interests prefer?

They do all that, it is dishonest, and in effect it is lying.

We had the bollocks about the distinction between lying and being 'economical with the truth', and it is bollocks. Honesty is required, and dishonesty undermines society. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. anything less is corrupting of society.

Quoting Isaac

We have to trust our institutions where we defer to experts whose actual opinion we're not capable of judging. I agree with you about the threat this represents to society. I think the solution, though, is more acknowledgement of uncertainty, more openness about modeling assumptions, more discussion of theory choice (where the evidence underdetermines)...

In other words, less talk of truth and lies. More talk of pragmatism and expediency.

Of course, our uncertainty is part of the truth of things. An expert who over sells their confidence is misrepresenting the situation. 'Trust me, I'm a doctor', only works if the doctor is honest about the limits of his expertise. The result of that professions' false projection of infallibility over decades is a distrust of medicine so widespread as to be a health hazard in its own right (eg anti-vaccers).

But no, expediency and pragmatism result in cover-ups and distortions and exaggerations 'for our own good' and they always get exposed eventually and are always corrosive of trust and meaning. We have to trust our institutions and experts, therefore it is essential that they are trustworthy, and that means not pragmatically or expediently truthful but brutally honest and truthful about their own limitations, and about what they do know, all the time, not when it suits.

One should not need to 'talk of truth' - it should be redundant. I am talking of truth here, but I am not advocating talking of truth, I am advocating telling the truth. The more we all tell the truth, the less we need to talk about it.

Whenever one hears, "To be perfectly honest..." or "Frankly speaking ..." or "Let me be absolutely clear...", or "The reality is..." or any such preface, one can be assured that a lie will immediately follow - "and I really mean that sincerely".

Quoting Banno

?Fooloso4 While I appreciate your efforts, I'm too far removed from Hegel to see the relevance of your explication. You've lost me.

Earlier you said:

Quoting Banno

But idealism is tied to antirealism,

Hegel's idealism is not antirealism. Hegel's absolute idealism holds that the real is the ideal and the ideal is the real. All differences and distinctions are understood within the unity of the whole of Absolute Spirit, which plays out dialectically in time as history. This includes the inorganic as well as the organic, thinking and being, realism and idealism.

Quoting Pie

How's this ? The meaning of the assertion, the sentence in use, seems to simply be the world(-as-understood). If we jettison apparent nonsense like the world-in-itself...the world is just that which is the case. To me this is not correspondence. There's just use/mention. 'P' is a string of letters. P is piece of a world, a truth (or an attempted truthery.)

This seems problematic. If sentences in use are the world, then they cannot also be about, or descriptive of, the world. If there is no distinction between language and the world - if sentences in use are that which they are usually thought to be about - then how are they used? Can the word ‘axe’ be used to chop down a tree? Or are ‘trees’ nothing more than unchoppable words? If sentences in use are the world, then there is no use-mention distinction. We can no longer use language to talk about the world if it is the world. Mention and use collapse into one (another), together with language and the world. All language can only talk about itself as language, or else it cannot be used as language (qua language) because it is the world.

Quoting unenlightened

But no, expediency and pragmatism result in cover-ups and distortions and exaggerations 'for our own good' and they always get exposed eventually and are always corrosive of trust and meaning. We have to trust our institutions and experts, therefore it is essential that they are trustworthy, and that means not pragmatically or expediently truthful but brutally honest and truthful about their own limitations

I think we're saying the same thing using different words. It seems you're talking about be 'truthful' about methods and limitations, I'm talking about being pragmatic about theories and plans.

The problem as I see it, is underdetermination. Even with 100% honest scientists, there'd still be a range of theories, all of which are well supported by the evidence. We need to choose between them, we can't do so in the basis of the evidence, so pragmatically, we need some method.

What seems to me to be the current method is yelling at one's detractors that one's pet theory is 'true' whilst theirs is 'lies'. That's the usage I'm criticising.

Quoting Fooloso4

In response to the claim that there is more to reality than what we talk about, you ask for more talk, for me to tell you what is.

I was half-joking, trying to get you to see that your theory includes the 'ineffable' implicitly. The 'windmills' comment was intended to remind you that of course we all know that non-talk exists. The issue is whether a theory including truthmakers, built on the ocular metaphor of representation, is ultimately more trouble than it's worth.

Note that inferences do not have non-talk for premises or conclusions (inputs or outputs.) We reason with/in sentences. Of course I acknowledge the non-talk reality in the boring, usual way, but I think it's better to handle it in terms of language entrances. 'The witness saw a blue car parked out front at 10:00 PM.'

[quote=link]
What then is required for knowledge of our own inner, private episodes, say knowledge that I’m having a sensation of a red triangle, if it isn’t just that I am sensing a red triangle? What else is required besides the actual sensation? In short, knowledge requires concepts, and since concepts are linguistic entities, we can say that knowledge requires a language. To know something as simple as that the patch is red requires an ability to classify that patch, and Sellars thinks the only resource for such rich categorization as adult humans are capable of comes from a public language.
[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/sellars/#H3

[quote=Hegel]
We can no longer talk of things at all,i.e.,of something that would be for consciousness merely the negative of itself.
...

Thought is always in its own sphere; its relations are with itself, and it is its own object.
...

...it takes for granted that the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real; in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true — a position which, while calling itself fear of error, makes itself known rather as fear of the truth.

[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phintro.htm

Quoting Luke

Can the word ‘axe’ be used to chop down a tree? Or are ‘trees’ nothing more than unchoppable words? If sentences in use are the world, then there is no use-mention distinction.

In my view, this is tricky to talk about because we are not all using 'sentence' and related words in the same way, sort of like dereferencing our pointers a different number of times. Use and mention are crucial here, and a little ambiguous, I admit.


To say it's true there are plums in the icebox is (basically) to say there are plums in the ice box.

The meaning of our true assertions just 'is' the world. ('The world is all that is the case.')

Quoting Luke

We can no longer use language to talk about the world if it is the world. Mention and use collapse into one (another), together with language and the world.

Consider though :

'John said that Sally said that the rent was already paid.'

'Braver emphasizes the similarity of Davidson's critique of conceptual schemes to Hegel's critique of knowledge conceived as an instrument that mediates an otherwise unmediated reality.'

That's me talking about Braver talking about Davidson and Hegel each talking about traditional ways of talking about how talk connects or not to the postulated untalky rest of the world.

Reply to bongo fury

Cool drawing. I understood much your intention, I hope.

For 'Hegel,' there's nothing for 'snow is white' or its equivalent 'it's true snow is white' to ride an arrow to. There's nothing behind the (meaning of) the statement. The temptation might be to run it to the whiteness of snow, but that redundance is precisely the motivation to stay put, for we're just repeating ourselves. As I see it, we also aren't served by an ineffable truthmaker any more than by a thump on the table. It's as if the revelation or disclosure of reality is the essence of language.

Your drawing gives me some insight, but it'd help to hear more about how you conceive or deal with truthmakers.

Quoting Olivier5

He concludes that metaphysics are "ticklish". By that he means that a person whose metaphysics are challenged would typically become rather aggressive towards the challenger.
I found his analysis convincing, and believe it does explain why there tends to be some aggressiveness in philosophy, contrary to a naïve cliché of the serene philosopher. Philosophy cuts deep, and it hurts. A philosopher is only serene to the extent that his or her metaphysics remains unchallenged.

:up: :up: :up:

Quoting Isaac

We really, really want others to adhere to our solutions.

The simple (eagles and snakes) version of 'truth' is secondary because we don't believe what we believe about those matters because we've done the equivalent of looking in the fridge, we do so because of who we trust, our faith in statistics, beliefs about the intentions of institutions...

:up: Quoting Isaac

the vast majority of societal functions and meanings depend overwhelmingly on concepts and belief so complex that 'truth' and 'lie' just don't really apply.

As complexity increases, it may be better to start discussing self-deception or, more neutrally, better or worse frameworks for editing beliefs.

Lysenko forced farmers to plant seeds very close together since, according to his "law of the life of species", plants from the same "class" never compete with one another.[4] Lysenko played an active role in the famines that killed millions of Soviet people and his practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages.[4] The People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong adopted his methods starting in 1958, with calamitous results, culminating in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1962, in which some 15–55 million people died.[note 1][4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

Quoting unenlightened

there can be wolves in sheep's clothing, but as a rule it must be sheep in sheep's clothing, otherwise we would call it 'wolves clothing' wouldn't we?

:up:

Nice!

Quoting unenlightened

There cannot be a complete collapse of faith and a complete collapse of meaning, because the lie loses meaning at the same rate as the truth. But people stop listening - they stop listening to the media, to the government, even to each other.

:up:

Quoting Pie

To say it's true there are plums in the icebox is (basically) to say there are plums in the ice box.

I’m trying to get clear on your use/mention analogy. Is this correct:

Mention = “It’s true that P”
Use = “P”

Is that it?

But I don’t imagine that the use of P determines P’s truth. So something else does?

Reply to Luke Reply to bongo fury
This is for anyone interested but seems especially relevant to my last responses to you two.

One idea is that language is 'primordially' 'disclosive' or 'revelatory.' Our world is significant. To utter P earnestly is to draw attention to the inexplicit or update the tribal knowledge base via one of its 'tentacles' (the guy who found honey in the woods.) We evolved presumably to share such information, so that assertion has a primacy that's hard to gainsay. Along these lines, 'seems' is merely a reduction of assertive force, a wobbly not-so-sure disclaimed that's parasitic on a more primary and confident assertion.

The other idea is that human awareness is fundamentally linguistic. 'Intuitions without concepts are blind.' All reasoning deals with the cooked, so that the cooked/raw distinction ends up looking useless.

For Sellars, inference itself is always a normative affair, a matter of the judgments one ought to or is entitled to make. He defuses the circularity which threatens such an account by arguing that our knowledge of what implies and follows from various claims is, in the first instance, a practical ability to discriminate, that is, to respond differentially to, good and bad inferences. Rule-governed linguistic behaviour develops out of multiple repertoires of ‘pattern-governed behaviour’, behaviour which exhibits a pattern because the propensity to produce behaviour belonging to that pattern has been selectively reinforced and contrary propensities selectively extinguished (see language, social nature of; Meaning and rule-following). The pattern-governed behaviour characteristic of language includes ‘language-entry transitions’, propensities to respond to non-linguistic states of affairs (such as sensory stimulations) with appropriate linguistic activity; ‘language-departure transitions’, propensities to respond to a subset of linguistic representings (for example, such first-person future-tensed conduct-ascriptions as ‘I shall now raise my hand’) with appropriate corresponding behaviour; and ‘intra-linguistic moves’, propensities to respond to linguistic representings with further linguistic episodes (only) in patterns corresponding to valid theoretical and practical inferences. Linguistic roles or functions, Sellars suggested, are ultimately individuated in terms of the structures of positive and negative uniformities generated in the natural order by such pattern-governed activities.

In the Kantian tradition Sellars insisted that, in contrast to the mere capacity to be sensorily affected by external objects, perception of how things are requires not only systematic differential response dispositions but also the ability to respond to sensory stimulation with a judgment, that is, the endorsement of a claim (see Perception, epistemic issues in). Sellars went on, however, to propose that reports of how things look or seem, rather than employing ‘more primitive’ concepts, result instead from withholding these characteristic endorsements. This account enabled him to explain the incorrigibility of ‘seems’ judgments that Cartesianism takes as its fundamental datum. Their incorrigibility is simply a matter of their tentativeness; a ‘seems’ judgment expresses a perceptual ascription without endorsing it. It follows that ‘seems’ judgments do not express a special class of immediate cognitions. Applying the concept ‘looks red’ requires the same mastery of inferential articulations, the same inferential ‘know how’, as does applying the concept ‘is red’.

Sellars’ analysis of the Cartesian incorrigibility of perceptual ‘seemings’ is one strand of the philosophical dialectic most frequently associated with his name, his comprehensive critique of the ‘Myth of the Given’. Basic to this critique is his insistence on the irreducibly normative character of epistemic discourse. Characterizing an episode or state in epistemic terms is not giving an empirical description of it but rather placing it within a social framework of justifications, of having and being able to give reasons for what one says. All knowledge that something is the case – all ‘subsumption of particulars under universals’ – presupposes intersubjective learning and concept formation. It follows that the ability to be (epistemically) aware of a sort of thing rests upon a prior command of the concept of that sort of thing and cannot account for it – and this holds equally true for concepts pertaining to ‘inner episodes’. The first-person reporting role of such concepts, a use Cartesians interpret as evidencing the ‘privacy’ of the mental and one’s ‘privileged access’ to one’s own mental states, is necessarily built upon and presupposes their intersubjective status.

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/sellars-wilfrid-stalker-1912-89/v-1/sections/epistemological-perspectives

Quoting Luke

I’m trying to get clear on your use/mention analogy. Is this correct:

Mention = “It’s true that P”
Use = “P”

Is that it?

I don't think we are on the same page yet. For the moment, I'd say...don't try to analysis "P is true." Take it as a whole.

I'm basically identifying use and meaning.

I suggest that it's true that snow is white and snow is white do the same thing when used, have the same meaning. To make that suggestion, I had to mention both assertions.

To say that P is true, is, in my view, only to repeat or emphasize P.

Quoting Pie

I suggest that it's true that snow is white and snow is white do the same thing when used, have the same meaning.

My point was they do the same thing only if it’s true; if its truth is first acknowledged. Is that an issue for the deflationary theory? I don’t know.

Also, “snow is white” could have other uses, but that may be off topic.

Quoting Pie

As complexity increases, it may be better to start discussing self-deception or, more neutrally, better or worse frameworks for editing beliefs.

Yes, exactly where I'm coming from. We have to choose between both competing modeling approaches (Lysenko) and competing theories (Russia, Covid, Climate Change..to name a few controversial ones). More often than not, this cannot be done with empirical evidence. The evidence simply supports both models/theories perfectly unproblematically.

So we need ways, habits, which help us choose fruitfully.

Quoting Michael

"I believe that p is true and p is not true" is, in a sense, consistent and possibly true, but in another sense an absurd thing to say.

Cool example, which touches on the coherence norms of the 'I think' or 'I believe' that attaches implicitly to individuals' claims. We can see in this example why that norm is so important. We'd think the speaker did not know English or was radically illogical.

Granting that are differences between 'P' and 'P is true,' I still think that, in this context, making them equal is a better path than the alternatives...though I don't pretend to know all the trails in these woods.

Reply to Pie I think Moore's paradox might be a useful thing to consider here.

That I believe that p is true doesn't entail that p is true, and so "I believe that p is true and p is not true" is, in a sense, consistent and possibly true, but in another sense an absurd thing to say.

This is where I think the meaning-as-use approach isn't the full story. Although in the everyday sense we might agree that the assertions "p" and "I believe p" are doing the same thing, in a more strict sense they can have different truth-values, and if two propositions can have different truth-values then they mean different things.

So I don't think it right (or rather insufficient) to just look to our ordinary, everyday speech to understand the difference between "snow is white" is true and snow is white.

Quoting Pie

I was half-joking, trying to get you to see that your theory includes the 'ineffable' implicitly.

There is nothing ineffable about a world that is not limited by what we say, or, for that matter, by what we see.

Quoting Pie

The issue is whether a theory including truthmakers, built on the ocular metaphor of representation, is ultimately more trouble than it's worth.

I am not talking about a theory. Of course a theory is linguistic!

Quoting Pie

We reason with/in sentences.

This is in many cases true, but reasoning about spatial relations, for example, need not be linguistic. I can figure out how to pack the car with too much stuff or arrange the furniture without language.

link:In short, knowledge requires concepts ...

You have shifted from being in the world to knowledge. While knowledge is, for human beings, a part of being in the world, that is not the whole of it.

link:To know something as simple as that the patch is red requires an ability to classify that patch ...

This is backwards. I must be able to see that the patch is red in order to classify it as red. Other animals can see and respond to colors without naming or classifying them. Do they "know" it is red or green? Their survival may depend on seeing something as this rather than that color.

Quoting Pie

... Hegel...

You may buy into Hegel's metaphysics, with everything wrapped in a nice teleological bundle with not only [added; European] man but Hegel himself playing a key role in the unfolding of reality, but I don't. For all its cosmopolitanism it is more than a bit provincial.

Quoting Isaac

We have to choose between both competing modeling approaches (Lysenko) and competing theories (Russia, Covid, Climate Change..to name a few controversial ones). More often than not, this cannot be done with empirical evidence.

That seems correct. Theories are underdetermined.

Quoting Pie

There's probably lots of wiggle room on the issue of pragmatics, which I'm admittedly ignoring to focus on what I take to be the essence of the issue. I claim that it's better to not think of truth as a property.

I didn’t mean to imply truth was a property. If the deflationary theory takes truth for granted, then it leaves unexplained what makes a sentence true. Is it correspondence, coherence, something else or nothing at all?

Quoting Luke

If the deflationary theory takes truth for granted, then it leaves unexplained what makes a sentence true. Is it correspondence, coherence, something else or nothing at all?

Nothing at all. The postulated truthmaker is either redundant or uselessly ineffable. What makes it correct to say that snow is white ? The 'actual' whiteness of snow ? But what does 'actual' do there?

'Snow is white' is true because (?) snow is white. I claim that that 'because' is misleading or errant. It adds nothing, does not explain.

Reply to Pie There must be a reason that not all statements are true, no?

Quoting Luke

There must be a reason that not all statements are true, no?

Must there be ?

Reply to Pie No, all statements are true, including this one.

Quoting Luke

If the deflationary theory takes truth for granted, then it leaves unexplained what makes a sentence true.

I currently take it as the honest theory...one that would rather not spout nonsense, bewitched by old metaphors...

But maybe your intuition is a sure guide ? And philosophy ought to know better than to challenge your hunches?

Quoting Fooloso4

I must be able to see that the patch is red in order to classify it as red. Other animals can see and respond to colors without naming or classifying them. Do they "know" it is red or green?

Clearly this hinges on how we understand what it is to know. I'll do you one better. Does a thermostat know when it's hotter than 68 degrees ? Does an electron know that it's being pushed by a neighbor in a copper wire ? I didn't peg you for a panpsychist, but ?

Quoting Fooloso4

While knowledge is, for human beings, a part of being in the world, that is not the whole of it.

Thank you, Polonius ! Do toilets flush ? Do cows go moo ?

"Just then, they discovered thirty or forty windmills in that plain. And as soon as don Quixote saw them, he said to his squire: “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have ever hoped. Look over there, Sancho Panza, my friend, where there are thirty or more monstrous giants with whom I plan to do battle and take all their lives, and with their spoils we’ll start to get rich. This is righteous warfare, and it’s a great service to God to rid the earth of such a wicked seed.”

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

“Those that you see over there,” responded his master, “with the long arms—some of them almost two leagues long.”

“Look, your grace,” responded Sancho, “what you see over there aren’t giants—they’re windmills; and what seems to be arms are the sails that rotate the millstone when they’re turned by the wind.”

https://core100.columbia.edu/article/excerpt-don-quixote

Quoting Fooloso4

You may buy into Hegel's metaphysics, with everything wrapped in a nice teleological bundle with not only man but Hegel himself playing a key role in the unfolding of reality, but I don't.

No one does these days, I daresay.

Quoting Fooloso4

For all its cosmopolitanism it is more than a bit provincial.

Oh dear.

Quoting Luke

No, all statements are true, including this one.

That is, it’s false that any statement is false. :cool:

Quoting Pie

I currently take it as the honest theory...one that would rather not spout nonsense, bewitched by old metaphors...

Fine, but it’s not much of a theory of truth if it doesn’t offer an account of what makes a statement true.

Quoting Pie

Does a thermostat know when it's hotter than 68 degrees ?

An important question for AI, but I would say that the ability of an animal to distinguish between two colors is a form of knowledge, even though it may be excluded by a favored theory of knowledge.

Quoting Pie

I didn't peg you for a panpsychist, but ?

but no.

Quoting Pie

Thank you, Polonius !

Why the insult?

“Look, your grace,” responded Sancho, “what you see over there aren’t giants—they’re windmills; and what seems to be arms are the sails that rotate the millstone when they’re turned by the wind.”

I assume you miss the irony. You appeal to linguistic practices and call it reality.

Quoting Luke

not much of a theory of truth if it doesn’t offer an account of what makes a statement true.

That begs the question. You're assuming anything does.

Quoting Isaac

That begs the question. You're assuming anything does.

The correspondence and coherence theories of truth both theorise about what does.

It seems to me that the deflationary theory is not inconsistent with either of these and that either could be tacked on to the deflationary theory for an account of what makes statements true.

I do believe there is a reason why we say that some statements are true and some are false, though. Don’t you?

Quoting Pie

For all its cosmopolitanism it is more than a bit provincial.
— Fooloso4

Oh dear.

Hegel's historical and geographical provinciality likewise seems remarkable, if we consider that he was the great exponent of a universal "Absolute Spirit." In the Philosophy of History, Hegel not only "writes off China as being outside history but refuses to give any serious attention to Russia or the other Slavic countries because they contributed nothing important to (European) history. And even Hegel's empathy with western European nations was severely limited, as is shown by his disagreement with Kant about the possibility of anything like a league of nations (PR, §333, Zusatz).

Hegel, like Kant, seemed to think of Negroes as a definitely inferior race. He theorised that although they were stronger and more educable than American Indians (PH, 109), Negroes represented the inharmonious state of "natural man," before humans' attainment of consciousness of God and their own individuality (PH, 123); and that, in general, white skin was the most perfect harbinger of both physical health and conscious receptivity!" In line with these sentiments, he of course eliminated the whole continent of Africa from explicit historical consideration, except insofar as certain Africans were influenced by European Mediterranean culture. He offered a left-handed compliment to "the Negroes," in that he ascribed natural talent to them, whereas the American Indians, he opined, had no such natural endowments (PH, 82). [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/kainz7.htm]

Quoting Luke

The correspondence and coherence theories of truth both theorise about what does.

It seems to me that the deflationary theory is not inconsistent with either of these and that either could be tacked on to the deflationary theory for an account of what makes statements true.

Possibly, but it doesn't mean there is a necessity for them to.

Quoting Luke

I do believe there is a reason why we say that some statements are true and some are false, though. Don’t you?

Yes, I've written about it on this thread. I think there are numerous reasons to do with wanting to get others to believe us, wanting to show faith in others, wanting to give an indication of confidence...

Quoting Isaac

Yes, I've written about it on this thread. I think there are numerous reasons to do with wanting to get others to believe us, wanting to show faith in others, wanting to give an indication of confidence...

These are not the main reasons I would think of for our saying e.g. that “snow is white” is true, or that “there are plums in the icebox” is false.

Quoting Luke

These are not the main reasons I would think of for our saying e.g. that “snow is white” is true, or that “there are plums in the icebox” is false.

OK. What reasons might you be thinking of?

Reply to Isaac Correspondence. “There are plums in the icebox” is false because I looked in there and found none - is a better reason imo than wanting something for/from others.

Quoting Pie

Your drawing gives me some insight, but it'd help to hear more about how you conceive or deal with truthmakers.

Picture 1 is meant to explain ordinary usage of "truth-maker/truth-bearer".

Quoting bongo fury

Not that we have to acknowledge truth-makers corresponding to truth-bearers.

Hence picture 2. Nonetheless, picture 1 is (or so I thought) the usual shared assumption when people use those terms (competently), or when they invoke the use-mention distinction for whole sentences. And in cases like this:

Quoting Pie

If we jettison apparent nonsense like the world-in-itself...the world is just that which is the case. To me this is not correspondence. There's just use/mention. 'P' is a string of letters. P is piece of a world, a truth (or an attempted truthery.)

I'm hoping the picture will help us agree whether your P is truth bearer or truth maker or both or neither? What are the odds, I wonder... :grin:

Quoting Luke

Correspondence. “There are plums in the icebox” is false because I looked in there and found none - is a better reason imo than wanting something for/from others.

So your go to expression to communicate the lack of plums in the fridge is “"There are plums in the icebox” is false"? Not "there aren't any plums in the fridge"?

Quoting Isaac

So your go to expression to communicate the lack of plums in the fridge is “"There are plums in the icebox” is false"? Not "there aren't any plums in the fridge"?

No, you seem to have lost track of the discussion. We were talking about the reasons why we would say that a statement is true or false, not how to best express that a statement is true or false. Your reasons were “to do with wanting to get others to believe us, wanting to show faith in others, wanting to give an indication of confidence...” I suggested a better reason for why we would say that a statement is true or false would be e.g. the (lack of) correspondence between the statement “there are plums in the icebox” and what we find in the icebox.

Quoting Pie

So what's your preferred understanding of truth ?

My understanding of truth, how it emerges, and how it works within all thought, belief, and statements thereof is not exactly conventional. Correspondence Theory is closest but has vestiges of historical mistaken accounting practices persisting. Tarski's 'explanation' is best, but I've been told that I misunderstand it, because to me it is a near perfect account of how a true statement is so by virtue of correspondence to the way things are, the case at hand, what's happened, is happening, and/or has yet to have happened(wrt predictions/expectations). My outright rejection of "propositions" as they've been historically conceived doesn't help either, given their continued prevalence. As we've touched upon elsewhere, my objection is based upon the fact that convention has it that truth requires language in a way that it is somehow existentially dependent upon it, such that where there has never been language, there could have never been truth. I've very good reason to reject that claim and hold otherwise, but I'll leave it at that for now.

A story may prove helpful...

There was a recent power outage after a storm in one of my sons' homes. The lack of electricity had already lasted for most of the day, and the power company informed everyone in the affected areas that it may take quite a while longer to restore power to everyone's homes. All the adults in the house were cognizant of the dangers of food spoilage, particularly the stuff in the fridge. As a result, there was a concerted effort to minimize potential losses by keeping the fridge closed as much as possible.

My not-quite-two-year-old grandchild had just begun putting more than one word together in speech. She had no clue what the word "truth" meant. She could not use the terms "true", "false", "not true", or any of the other common terms and words used to talk about true and false statements. However, she definitely knew when she heard a false claim about the contents of the fridge, even though she was barely capable of stringing words together, and could neither name nor describe a single item therein.

That fact is interesting and relevant.

So, the power is out, the adults are deliberately attempting to open the fridge as little as possible as a means to save the food within, when she walked towards the fridge extending her arm, fingers outstretched, as if to open the fridge door to look inside. This was already a habit of hers, to stand there holding the door wide open while looking all around inside to decide if she wanted anything she saw. All the adults in the home knew that much and they had all been long since attempting to discourage her from do so, even before the power outage. So, when one of them took notice of her intention to open the fridge, they also believed that she would once again stand in front of it with the door wide open while deciding if she wanted anything she saw. In a proactive attempt to put a halt to that, they sternly called out her name as a means of immediately getting her attention so that the door remained closed. It worked, temporarily at least. She stopped right in front of the fridge, her hand already on the handle of the door, looking back. He then goes on to say, in a much friendlier tone, "There's nothing in there" in an attempt to stop her from opening and holding the fridge door open and letting all the cool air out of it while she 'window shopped'. What he meant was that there was nothing that she needed at the time, because they were conserving the cool air within, but he did not say that, and she did not understand what he meant. She heard exactly what he said, understood exactly what those words meant, and knew that what he said was not true. The interesting part is that she knew all this even though she was completely incapable of expressing her knowledge with the terms I'm using to describe the situation.

Ahhh...but what she did do was sooo much better!

Instead, she furled her brow, displayed all the confidence that a toddler of that age can possibly muster, and retorted "Uh huh" while opening the door wide enough for him to be able see inside. After ensuring that he could see inside for himself, she began directly contradicting his claim that there was nothing inside the fridge by virtue of pointing to all the different things that were inside the fridge saying "There's that... and that... and that... and that..."

So, what can this situation tell us about truth and/or our understanding thereof?

It tells us quite clearly that a mastery of language is not necessary in order to be able to tell when some statements are true or false, or to already intuitively know how to check and see for ourselves as well as showing another that what they've said is not true. It shows us that we can already understand all of this, on a very basic level, long before having acquired the mastery of language replete with metacognitive endeavors that are required in order for us to be able to talk about it. It shows us that she understood how true claims correspond and false ones do not long before ever being capable of using those terms. She showed him that what he said was not true, and that she knew that much, despite her not being able to tell him.


It also shows us quite clearly that coherence played no role in her understanding, in her knowing that what he said was not true. She was not taken aback regarding whether or not his words followed the so-called 'rules' of correct inference. She was not criticizing the consistency of his language use. She was not keeping a keen eye on the form of his language use. She was not attempting to judge whether he said what he meant.

She was comparing what he said about the contents of the fridge to her knowledge of those contents. She already knew that some stuff was in the fridge, so she knew that what he said was not true. That comparison happened autonomously without the mastery of language required to be able to say so. She communicated to him that what he said was not true. She did not have the mastery of language in order to be able to tell him. So, she did so by virtue of the only means available to her at the time. She showed him that what he said about the contents of the fridge did not correspond to the contents of the fridge. In her doing so, she shows us that we need not be able to use the terms so often used in philosophical and normal everyday discourse in order to intuitively know that 1.)some meaningful statements are false, 2.)what makes them so, 3.)how to check and see for ourselves, or 4.)how to show someone else.

It's no stretch at all to extend that to knowing some meaningful statements are true, what makes them so, how to check for ourselves, and how to show others.

All long before having a linguistic framework replete with the terms "truth", "true", "false", etc...

Quoting Luke

I suggested a better reason for why we would say that a statement is true or false would be e.g. the (lack of) correspondence between the statement “there are plums in the icebox” and what we find in the icebox.

Why's that a better reason?

Serendipitous storytelling timing!

:smile:

Quoting Luke

Fine, but it’s not much of a theory of truth if it doesn’t offer an account of what makes a statement true.

The broader idea is that we can say much more about warrant and belief than truth. We can talk endlessly about what causes beliefs and what beliefs cause. But truth? We know that warranted statements can be false and that unwarranted statements can be true. The utility of 'true' may depend on the 'absoluteness' of its grammar. If 'is true' adds nothing (essential) as a suffix to 'P', then what you really need an account of is earnest assertions.

Reply to Isaac Because yours don’t seem like the sort of reasons we would use to decide whether “there are plums in the icebox” is true or false.

Quoting Luke

Because yours don’t seem like the sort of reasons we would use to decide whether “there are plums in the icebox” is true or false.

Reasons we'd use to decide?

Look in the fridge?

Ask someone we trust?

Which of those had anything to to with your reasons ...

Quoting Luke

for our saying e.g. that “snow is white” is true, or that “there are plums in the icebox” is false.

Quoting Fooloso4

Why the insult?

I'm just getting rowdy, mirroring you. I'm happy to tone it down. We all know that there's stuff in the world that's not language. That's common sense, yes? So obviously the issue is not so simple. As I see it, the tricky part is making sense of truth-makers...or rooting them out as nonsense.

This much is agreed: “x makes it true that p” is a construction that signifies, if it signifies anything at all, a relation borne to a truth-bearer by something else, a truth-maker. But it isn’t generally agreed what that something else might be, or what truth-bearers are, or what the character might be of the relationship that holds, if it does, between them, or even whether such a relationship ever does hold.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/

Quoting Pie

The broader idea is that we can say much more about warrant than truth. We know that warranted statements can be false and that unwarranted statements can be true. The utility of 'true' may depend on the absoluteness of its grammar.

Is this in reference to Gettier examples? There is still some reason why we would ultimately say that the statements are true or false, and it still looks correspondence-y to me.

Quoting Isaac

Reasons we'd use to decide?

Look in the fridge?

Yes, look in the fridge and see if the statement about the plums corresponds with what we find in there.

Quoting Isaac

Ask someone we trust?

I don’t recall that being a reason you gave…

Quoting bongo fury

I'm hoping the picture will help us agree whether your P is truth bearer or truth maker or both or neither?

I currently don't find the idea of a truth-maker very useful or intelligible. Obviously we can talk about reasons people believe P. That's different, in my view.

Truth-bearer seems closer, but there's already talk of an entity that can be true or false and nothing else. A bit rigid !

Claims can be true, false, ambiguous, or incoherent...Am I leaving something out?

Quoting bongo fury

What are the odds, I wonder...

Given that we're all pretty clever, I think it's largely a matter of clarifying what we even mean. Correspondence theory seems close to the redundancy theory. Is the world fundamentally significant or meaningful ?

Some are tempted to think of a layer of meaning that humans lay down and then postulate some X beneath this layer without being able to say anything about it. The view I'm naming is 'Hegel' is anti-idealist in its rejection of this dualism. It's like 'no-longer-naive realism.' 'The cat is on the mat' is 'made true' by the cat being on the mat, which is redundant. It might help to put it this way:

' 'P' is true ' means roughly the same as ' P '. (I added quotes that were implicit before.)

Quoting Fooloso4

An important question for AI, but I would say that the ability of an animal to distinguish between two colors is a form of knowledge, even though it may be excluded by a favored theory of knowledge.

Do the thermostat or the electron have knowledge ? Is a differential response sufficient ?

Isn't proposing and criticizing and defending theories of knowledge part of the game ?

To be sure, (non-human) animal cognition is worth looking into, but I hardly think it's strange for a philosopher to focus on human (linguistic) claims.

Quoting Pie

We all know that there's stuff in the world that's not language.

Your responses seem to indicate otherwise, but I am not going to rehash this. Time for me to move on.

Quoting Luke

I don’t recall that being a reason you gave…

That's because I was giving reasons why we might say "“there are plums in the icebox” is false".

You then asked for reasons we'd use to decide whether there's plums in the icebox. I took that to mean strategies we'd use (since we can't 'use' reasons, we 'give' reasons).

Two different questions.

As to the first. For what reason might we say "“there are plums in the icebox” is false"... I can't see how a lack of plums in the icebox even reaches the top ten. It would be a rubbish reason.

If I said "“there are plums in the icebox” is false" and you said "why did you say that?" I guarantee in most cases "because there's no plums in the icebox" will not be considered sufficient reason...

The follow-up question will be "that's as may be, but why did you say it in that weird way?"

.Quoting Isaac

That begs the question. You're assuming anything does.

:up: :up: :up:

Phlogiston.

Quoting Luke

“There are plums in the icebox” is false because I looked in there and found none

This is certainly a intuitive approach, but it's caught up in the first-person ghost story. One can't make inferences using spectral entities like 'private experience.' We can use "@Luke said the ice box was empty" in an inference, along perhaps with "@Luke is a reliable detector of plums" and so on. No one needs to deny some weird entity like what-it's-like-to-see-no-plums, but this is just some beetle in a box, not clearly any more useful than phlogiston or the waving ether.

Quoting Luke

Is this in reference to Gettier examples?

No.

Quoting Luke

There is still some reason why we would ultimately say that the statements are true or false, and it still looks correspondence-y to me.

I agree that we that have reasons for making claims. Perhaps our sense organs are battered by the environment and we've been trained to make reliable non-inferential reports. Perhaps we apply inferential norms to beliefs we hold and derive a new belief.

Reply to Pie You could also check the icebox for plums. I later started speaking about ‘our’ reasons for saying that a statement is true or false.

Quoting Luke

You could also check the icebox for plums. I later started speaking about ‘our’ reasons for saying that a statement is true or false.

Sure. 'Twenty different people agreed that the icebox was empty' might figure in an inference.

The issue is (trying to say) what you saw in that icebox. Was it not that there were no plums in it ? Which is to say already conceptual ?

Quoting Pie

To be sure, (non-human) animal cognition is worth looking into, but I hardly think it's strange for a philosopher to focus on human (linguistic) claims.

It is not a matter of it being strange but of looking at questions of knowledge, language, and thinking by defining them in terms of what humans do. It is as if we were to claim that only humans can walk because what we do is what walking is and this is not what other animals do.

I would argue that a self-driving car knows how to drive. It is evident from the fact that it can drive. In some ways it already drives better than a human. Further, to drive requires an awareness of the surroundings, and so, it has awareness. I think it is a mistake to think that we have fixed concepts of such things as knowledge and awareness and if what a self-driving car does does not not match these concepts then it cannot have knowledge or awareness.

Do I want to say, then, that certain facts are favorable to the formation of certain concepts; or again unfavorable? And does experience teach us this? It is a fact of experience that human beings alter their concepts, exchange them for others when they learn new facts; when in this way what was formerly important to them becomes unimportant, and vice versa. (It is discovered e.g. that what formerly counted as a difference in kind, is really only a difference in degree. [Wittgenstein, Zettel, 352]

Reply to Pie I don’t deny that it’s already conceptual. I just don’t see how it follows that there are no truthmakers or that the correspondence theory of truth is defeated.

Quoting creativesoul

She showed him that what he said about the contents of the fridge did not correspond to the contents of the fridge. In her doing so, she shows us that we need not be able to use the terms so often used in philosophical and normal everyday discourse in order to intuitively know that 1.)some meaningful statements are false, 2.)what makes them so, 3.)how to check and see for ourselves, or 4.)how to show someone else.

I agree that correspondence is common sense and that to bother with the redundancy theory that I'm defending is fussy. Indeed, the redundancy theory might only have a bite in the first place in the context of other 'sophisticated' theories. A 'veil-of-ideas' philosopher is a natural target here, for whom the sight of the plums would themselves be 'phenomenon' or 'appearance.' I take Hegel (who I include in my camp) to have been frustrated by all the Kantian machinery that was supposed to be between us and reality.

Reply to Luke
Fair enough. But what's a truthmaker for 'there are plums in the icebox'? Are you tempted to say something like...there being plums in the icebox?

Quoting Fooloso4

I would argue that a self-driving car knows how to drive. It is evident from the fact that it can drive.

That's nonstandard usage of 'know' and seems to imply that thermostats also have knowledge. You are of course free to develop a theory in that direction, but it doesn't seem relevant to the thread. If you start your own on that issue, I'd be glad to participate.

Quoting Fooloso4

I think it is a mistake to think that we have fixed concepts of such things as knowledge and awareness

Of course. But no one says we do. Indeed, we are precisely trying to clarify and elaborate and even modify concepts here and in general. On the other hand, some relatively stable concepts are always in play, else we'd be (completely) unintelligible to each other.

Quoting Fooloso4

Your responses seem to indicate otherwise, but I am not going to rehash this. Time for me to move on.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Quoting Pie

You are of course free to develop a theory in that direction, but it doesn't seem relevant to the thread.

You asked:

Quoting Pie

Does a thermostat know when it's hotter than 68 degrees ?

And prior to that you quoted Sellars claim that knowledge requires concepts.

What if someone were to ask if it is true that a self-driving car knows how to drive? Does your interest in truth makers and truth bearers help in answering this question?

I agree that:

Clearly this hinges on how we understand what it is to know.

Is it sufficient to say that it is true that a car knows how to drive itself iff a car can drive itself? Or can we dispense with this and simply say that there are cars that drive themselves? Of course for those who want to preserve a particular concept of knowledge, this leaves open the question of the truth of whether or not they know how to do what they do

Reply to Fooloso4 The common feature of antirealism is not attributing a truth value to unknowns. So a realist will say that "there is a teapot in orbit around Jupiter" is false, an antirealist will say it has no truth value.

Quoting Fooloso4

Hegel's idealism is not antirealism. Hegel's absolute idealism holds that the real is the ideal and the ideal is the real. All differences and distinctions are understood within the unity of the whole of Absolute Spirit, which plays out dialectically in time as history. This includes the inorganic as well as the organic, thinking and being, realism and idealism.

That tells me nothing about Hegel's attitude towards the truth value of "there is a teapot in orbit around Jupiter".

Quoting Pie

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

"Give a man a fish ..."

I think a large part of the problem is that we have different ideas of what philosophy is about. I hold to the ancient idea of philosophy as a way of life. This does not mean making, defending, and attacking arguments, although that is a part of it.

Quoting Isaac

I don't see how. If I say "Rory Gallagher is the best guitarist ever, it's true" do you really think the meaning of 'it's true' there relies on any kind of logic? I'm just emphasising my belief.

...and your belief is that you hold "Rory Gallagher is the best guitarist ever, it's true" to be true...

Quoting Isaac

You're assuming we're all playing a certain type of game, but I don't see any reason why we must be, and most times seems to me we aren't.

Indeed, you are making an assertion, and making an assertion is attaching a truth value to a statement. You can't make an assertion without asserting that some statement is true. That's what the game of making an assertion involves. Hence the T-sentence.

"p" is true iff p

Quoting Fooloso4

Is it sufficient to say that it is true that a car knows how to drive itself iff a car can drive itself? Or can we dispense with this and simply say that there are cars that drive themselves?

I'm sure we agree that meaning is contextual. We want to think with the learned and have no choice but to speak with the vulgar, for we ourselves are vulgar most of the time. I mean 'vulgar' non-pejoratively.

I'm a big fan of Wittgenstein, but I like 'positive' theorists who build on the rubble that destructive theorists leave behind. Wittgenstein obliterated various 'Cartesian' confusions, for those who can bear or manage to understand him. As I see, I'm taking the same kind of anti-Cartesian position here. Intuitively (vulgarly) it's the sight of the plums in the icebox that's a truthmaker for 'there are plums in the ice box.' For ordinary purposes this is fine. For 'me' personally it's fine. But reasoning and meaning are essentially public. It's cleaner to talk in terms of claims, since the point is allowing or disallowing inferences. 'Tim said there were no plums in the icebox.' And we trust Tim's comforming to our tribal conceptual norms.

Quoting Banno

That tells me nothing about Hegel's attitude towards the truth value of "there is a teapot in orbit around Jupiter".

Hegel's concept of truth is not to be found in truth values:

From the preface to the Phenomenology:

5. The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth.

6. ... truth has the element of its existence solely in concepts.

18. Furthermore, the living substance is the being that is in truth subject, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of self-positing, or, that it is the mediation of itself and its becoming-other-to-itself.

Reply to Sam26 There's more to Philosophy than Wittgenstein. Davidson seems to take much of the Investigations as read, and then to ask "where now?"

Davidson is a son of Quine, hence his ideas flow parallel with Wittgenstein's, not against them.

And like Wittgenstein, Davidson's view changed over the course of his life, from a need to understand language in quite formal terms (Truth and Meaning) to a recognition of the indefinite flexibility of our utterances (A nice derangement of epitaphs)

The book The Essential Davidson collects the pivotal essays in one small volume, and while it won't be an easy read, it is a good starting point.

A thread on Davidson would be as absurd as a single thread on Wittgenstein. But it might be interesting to start a thread on one of his essays - say Truth and Meaning, since it sets out his early views.

Quoting Pie

'there are plums in the ice box.'

What about the fish?

Quoting Fooloso4

Hegel's concept of truth is not to be found in truth values:

So now you seem to be saying he is an antirealist...

Reply to Banno

Well, if antirealism means not attributing a truth value to unknowns, then he is an antirealist. But he does not attribute truth value to knows either. It is the system as a whole not particulars that is true.

I am reminded of Arthur Koestler's definition of philosophy:

The systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose.

Reply to Fooloso4 Yes, that seems to be so.

Quoting Pie

P is true is just fancy talk for P. This is the 'redundancy' theory.

But truth, like most things, is not binary. Sentences have degrees of truth. Absolute truth is an edge case.

Therefore, P cannot be the same thing as P is true. P in itself cannot express the range of degrees the truth property of P can take.

Truth is just one property of P. It's semantic contents, its aesthetic appeal, the number of words, the language and dialect, are other properties of P.

P is the proposition, 'P is true' is a comment on P's property of truth.

Quoting Fooloso4

I think a large part of the problem is that we have different ideas of what philosophy is about. I hold to the ancient idea of philosophy as a way of life. This does not mean making, defending, and attacking arguments, although that is a part of it.

I want to live a wise life like just about anyone who survives their youth perhaps. All of us, philosophers or not, are under pressure to figure out which claims to trust. I also count rationality as a social virtue. I connect this to the desire to achieve consensus fairly. I see us as self-transcending beings, discarding narrow, one-sided views for something larger, something we can share. Wittgenstein demonstrates one aspect (the semantic) in what might be called the primacy of the social.

[quote = Kant]
It is requisite to reason’s lawgiving that it should need to presuppose only itself, because a rule is objectively and universally valid only when it holds without the contingent, subjective conditions that distinguish one rational being from another.
[/quote]

That applies to people in general, who don't seem to need us fussy philosophers. In strictly practical terms, mastering basic statistics, including the necessary math, is probably more valuable than reading Wittgenstein.

Quoting hypericin

But truth, like most things, is not binary.

As opposed to a few things that are ?

Quoting hypericin

Sentences have degrees of truth. Absolute truth is an edge case.

I think that they sometimes to, due to ambiguity primarily. But let us differentiate carefully here between imperfectly true statements (fuzzy logic, etc.) and the confidence we have in our beliefs.

Quoting hypericin

Truth is just one property of P. It's semantic contents, its aesthetic appeal, the number of words, the language and dialect, are other properties of P.

P is the proposition, 'P is true' is a comment on P's property of truth.

The issue though is whether truth is a property in the first place.

I use P as a symbol for the semantic payload of 'P'.

Reply to Pie What distinction do you make between truth and values and do you consider it preferable (or even possible) for one's values to be mostly determined by true things? By values I mean things like democracy, secularism, scientific evidence (e.g., medical treatment versus prayer), feminism, etc.

Quoting Pie

I think that they sometimes to, due to ambiguity primarily. But let us differentiate carefully here between imperfectly true statements (fuzzy logic, etc.) and the confidence we have in our beliefs.

What's special about our confident beliefs?

Language is nothing if not ambiguous. Statements may be true, within a temporal window. They may be true, only within certain spatial coordninates. They may be true from some physical or mental perspectives, but not others. They may be true within the framework of some cultures and ideologies, but not others. They may be true in some perfectly legitimate interpretations, and false in other perfectly legitimate interpretations.

Even trivial toy examples, "The sky is blue", admit to this ambiguity. In one sense it is true. Yet is the sky itself a blue object in the way other blue objects are? No, the blue is a result of light scattering in the atmosphere, in a manner totally unlike blue objects in our everyday experience.

Quoting Pie

The issue though is whether truth is a property in the first place.

If truth can admit to degrees, which it does, then it must be a property.

Quoting Pie

I use P as a symbol for the semantic payload of 'P'.

There is not one definite semantic payload corresponding to a given sentence.

Quoting Pie

Fair enough. But what's a truthmaker for 'there are plums in the icebox'? Are you tempted to say something like...there being plums in the icebox?

Of course. It could be false.

Quoting hypericin

But truth, like most things, is not binary.

So... that's partially true?

Quoting hypericin

If truth can admit to degrees, which it does, then it must be a property.

Are you certain of this? To what degree?

Your argument, of course, applies to your own remarks, and so if it undermines everything, it undermines itself.

That language can be ambiguous is obvious. At issue is, what should we do about it?

Quoting Tom Storm

What distinction do you make between truth and values and do you consider it preferable (or even possible) for one's values to be mostly determined by true things?

Deep question ! I think we articulate values, make them explicit, as beliefs. 'No kid should go hungry in this country.' To me there's nothing wrong with this 'should.' It's just a value manifested as a belief about norms. I personally don't think rainbow or promises or marriages or square roots are less real than electrons or tables. They all figure in the same causal/explanatory nexus, which is (roughly) the structure of the world [s]as we know it.[/s]

Because warranted beliefs can be false and unwarranted beliefs can be true, I think the best thing we can do is take care of warrant, presumably because we expect to end up with more true or at least less false beliefs this way. To me irrationality is a primary form of anti-sociality, but I don't deny that people like Ayn Rand can make cults around the word in violation of the referent. I'm still haunted by Orwell's 1984. 'Ministry of Truth.'

Reply to Pie , Reply to Luke I never could see much of use in the notion of truthmakers. Can either of you explain what they are for?

Quoting hypericin

If truth can admit to degrees, which it does, then it must be a property.

Or the world itself is vague in places.

.Quoting Banno

So... that's partially true?

:up:
Quoting Banno

That language can be ambiguous is obvious. At issue is, what should we do about it?

:up:

Quoting Banno

A thread on Davidson would be as absurd as a single thread on Wittgenstein. But it might be interesting to start a thread on one of his essays - say Truth and Meaning, since it sets out his early views.

Well, I wasn't suggesting that the thread would cover all of Davidson's ideas.

We will disagree as to whether Davidson's ideas flow parallel with Wittgenstein, if you mean by parallel, there is agreement. Just from the little I read in the SEP, I don't get that idea. There are other philosophers who do a much better job of extending Wittgenstein's ideas.

And, of course, there is more to philosophy than Wittgenstein, who would think otherwise, certainly not me.

Quoting Banno

So... that's partially true?

Sure, in some contexts, propositional logic for instance, truth is binary.

Quoting Banno

Your argument, of course, applies to your own remarks, and so if it undermines everything, it undermines itself.

So it cannot be the state of affairs that truth has degrees, because if it did, it would be impossible to state that truth had degrees? Sophomoric argument.

In the real world we get by just fine without running around proclaiming absolute truths and falsities. My post is no different. To attempt to pigeonhole all propositions into T and F is to miss almost all the nuance of actual communication.

Quoting Luke

Of course. It could be false.

This is where the CorrTheory and the redundancy theory are very close. If plums being in the ice box are the 'truthmaker' for 'there are plums in the ice box,' then 'truthmaker' seems like too much of complement here.

For isn't this just a complicated way of saying that P is the truthmaker of 'P' ? But nothing is actually being added. No truth is being made. P is just (taken as) true.

.Reply to hypericin

I think the issue is truthmakers.

This much is agreed: “x makes it true that p” is a construction that signifies, if it signifies anything at all, a relation borne to a truth-bearer by something else, a truth-maker. But it isn’t generally agreed what that something else might be, or what truth-bearers are, or what the character might be of the relationship that holds, if it does, between them, or even whether such a relationship ever does hold. Indeed sometimes there’s barely enough agreement amongst the parties to the truth-maker dispute for them to be disagreeing about a common subject matter.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/

I think that @Banno and I both don't trust the notion much. It seems superfluous if not just confused.

This is weird and funny to me.

It seems obvious that for every true contingent proposition there must be something in the world (in the largest sense of “something”) which makes the proposition true. For consider any true contingent proposition and imagine that it is false. We must automatically imagine some difference in the world. (Armstrong 1973: 11)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/#Def

What in god's name is supposed to happen when we imagine that a proposition is false ? That just is imagining some difference in the world.

Quoting hypericin

To attempt to pigeonhole all propositions into T and F is to miss almost all the nuance of actual communication.

Is that T or F ? Or (T + F)/2 ?

Reply to Pie There's something in there about the separation of facts and true propositions that chimes with my discussion with @Sam26. As if in the T-sentence, 'p' (on the left) is a truth-bearer, and p (on the right) a truth-maker. What would that tell us?

Quoting Truthmaker Slogan

For any truth, there must be something in the world whose existence entails that truth.

Tautologies look to be an obvious counterexample. What is the something in the world whose existence entails that truth (p v ~p)?

Truthbearers look like an attempt to resuscitate substantive theories of truth by reintroducing some sort of ontological implication for true statements. It looks wrong.

Quoting Tom Storm

By values I mean things like democracy, secularism, scientific evidence (e.g., medical treatment versus prayer), feminism, etc.

I could have answered this better. FWIW, I think it's hard to divorce rationality from anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-classism. It goes with free speech, democracy, and science. I'd argue that it also goes with a minimum standard of living to prevent the collapse of that which makes a rational society possible in the first place, such as education, safety, and leisure.

Quoting Banno

As if in the T-sentence, 'p' (on the left) is a truth-bearer, and p (on the right) a truth-maker. What would that tell us?

That would explain why CT feels so close and so far away to the redundancy theory.

I'm afraid that folks might want to interpret 'P' as a string of letters. I tend to interpret it that way, reserving P for the meaning of 'P.' (This may be nonstandard of me.)

I get the sense that CT wants to interpret the P as the truthbearer, letting 'atoms and the void' or something be the truthmaker.

Quoting hypericin

So it cannot be the state of affairs that truth has degrees, because if it did, it would be impossible to state that truth had degrees? Sophomoric argument.

Of course. A sophomoric reply for a sophomoric issue. Truth only ever admits of degrees... of truth. If what is suggested is an attempt to escape truth, then it fails.

Quoting Banno

Truthbearers look like an attempt to resuscitate substantive theories of truth by reintroducing some sort of ontological implication for true statements. It looks wrong.

Yeah. Still seems like unnecessary machinery to me.

It's as if assertion is brutally irreducible, which I'd connect to the primacy of the social and the publicity of meaning.

Quoting Pie

CC

CC?

Reply to Banno
Oh Sorry ! I meant CT for correspondence theory. (Fixed).

Reply to Pie The thing about correspondence is that of course it is true... provided we don't pretend that it tells us anything about truth.

Hence the utility of reducing correspondence to truth-functional equivalence.

Reply to Banno

Is truth something like North on a compass ?

The grammatical role it play is so simple that it confuses.

'Assume P.'

Now P plays the role of the given, that which we stand on fearlessly.

Reply to Banno
That sounds right, depending on how CT is understood.

Reply to Banno

It seems obvious that for every true contingent proposition there must be something in the world (in the largest sense of “something”) which makes the proposition true. For consider any true contingent proposition and imagine that it is false. We must automatically imagine some difference in the world.

I think folks are falling prey to their visual imagination somehow. If the contingently true proposition is the color of Sally's dog, they visually imagine the color being changed, digging beneath propositions to 'sense-data.' This is the ice box temptation too. They 'see' the plums. They are trying to methodically ignore the conceptual aspect of experience, as if pre-conceptual visual memory were the truly real...and articulation was a secondary layer.

Cartesian baggage. As if epistemology makes sense as a merely private matter.

Or that's my hypothesis.

Quoting Banno

Truth only ever admits of degrees... of truth.

Not sure what this formulation is supposed to mean.

Quoting Banno

If what is suggested is an attempt to escape truth, then it fails.

Whew, glad I never once hinted at suggesting that.

Quoting Sam26

We will disagree as to whether Davidson's ideas flow parallel with Wittgenstein, if you mean by parallel, there is agreement. Just from the little I read in the SEP, I don't get that idea. There are other philosophers who do a much better job of extending Wittgenstein's ideas.

Parallel lines don't touch...

Here's Truth and Meaning.Let me know what you think. Davidson takes on questions unaddressed by Wittgenstein.

Reply to Pie I missed who had their plums in the icebox - I haven't read the whole thread, it having grown explosively while I slept, and my being preoccupied with replies to my own posts.

It sounds uncomfortable.

Reply to Banno


This Is Just To Say
By William Carlos Williams


I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Reply to Banno
The issue is...what's the truthmaker of 'there are plums in the icebox' ?

Quoting hypericin

I don't understand you. No one is talking about escaping truth.

Well, then, what are you claiming? Back to this:

Quoting hypericin

P cannot be the same thing as P is true.

The main function in a T-sentence is the truth functional operator "?", not "=". So indeed, p is not the same thing as "p is true".

Reply to Pie So...

'there are plums in the icebox' is true if and only if there are plums in the icebox.

Presumably - and here I am just trying out the apparent idea of a truthmaker - 'there are plums in the icebox' is made true by there being plums in the icebox... and so the notion of being is introduced, and we fall down a well of ontology.

That's progress?

I'm still not seeing it.

Reply to Banno
I don't think we need a truthmaker, just to be clear.

I've been speculating about what others, who disagree, might have in mind.

Quoting Pie

For isn't this just a complicated way of saying that P is the truthmaker of 'P' ? But nothing is actually being added. No truth is being made. P is just (taken as) true.

I’d just like to maintain some separation between the way things are in the world and our statements about the way things are in the world, because we might consider some of those statements to be false. It may be redundant whether we say either “P” or “P is true” (iff “P” is true), but it is not redundant to distinguish between P and “P”.

Quoting Pie

FWIW, I think it's hard to divorce rationality from anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-classism. It goes with free speech, democracy, and science.

Thanks for your answers to my earlier question. This one strikes me as somewhat tendentious. To me this position - which I generally share - seems to originate from a value system which already holds that reason and progressive politics are synonymous, or flip sides of the same coin. How does one make this case in philosophic terms? Rationality can also be mustered successfully to support conservative and libertarian positions, right? What process do we use to determine if a rational framework is being put to work appropriately, other than following the arguments back down to foundational value systems and agreeing or disagreeing with those?

Quoting Pie

I don't think we need a truthmaker, just to be clear.

Nor I - hence my disclaimer: Quoting Banno

...here I am just trying out the apparent idea of a truthmaker

Quoting Banno

I never could see much of use in the notion of truthmakers. Can either of you explain what they are for?

I’m not sure whether I’m using the term in accordance with truthmaker theory; I used it only as an expedient for “that which determines whether a statement is true or false”. A quick search seems to indicate this use is pretty much the same as the truthmaker theory.

Reply to Luke Thanks.

Heres' my problem: what sort of thing is "that which determines whether a statement is true or false"?

Because I think it clear that if anything determine that "The plums were in the icebox" is true, it's that plums are in the icebox.

One feels like saying that "what makes the statement true is..." And here one wants to finish with "the statement itself", but that is wrong; or perhaps one might finish with "what the statement says", or "the fact it presents", or some such; and none of these tell us anything.

So it looks to me more like there is a problem with supposing a something which determines that the statement is true or false; an unneeded reification.

The urge to posit a "that which determines whether a statement is true or false" is the urge towards substantive, ie, non-deflationary, accounts of truth.

Quoting Banno

So it looks to me more like there is a problem with supposing a something which determines that the statement is true or false; an unneeded reification.

I see your point. It becomes further mystification.

Quoting Luke

I’d just like to maintain some separation between the way things are in the world and our statements about the way things are in the world, because we might consider some of those statements to be false. It may be redundant whether we say either “P” or “P is true” (iff “P” is true), but it is not redundant to distinguish between P and “P”.

But is there a need to maintain a separation between the way things are in the world and our true statements about the way things are in the world?

Seems to me that there is not.

And it seems to me that this is what Davidson is saying in suggesting we give up our dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality: that there is no such separation between our true statements and the way things are. We "reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false".

(@Sam26)

Reply to bongo fury



Seems to me that this is an attempt to explain truth in terms of "describe" or "denote".

That's problematic, since firstly "is true" looks clearer than either "denotes" or "describes", and secondly we can ask if it is true that this "describes" or "denotes" that, and hence already need the notion of truth in order to understand denotation and description....

Here's the thing, and the same point as I was trying to make for @Isaac; that in order to have this discussion we make assertions, and in order to make assertions, we make use of truth; hence truth is fundamental to our discussions in. a way that renders it not a suitable subject for our discussions.

Put another way: there can be no substantive definition of truth.

Fair questions indeed! I'm self-consciously just a dude, a non-parent even, who likes to talk about ideas...and I feel my smallness. With that disclaimer, I open my big mouth and try again.

Quoting Tom Storm

To me this position - which I generally share - seems to originate from a value system which already holds that reason and progressive politics are synonymous, or flip sides of the same coin.

Quoting Tom Storm

How does one make this case in philosophic terms?

Maybe 'progressive' is a little too loaded here in our polarized times, though it's typically been on the side of enfranchisement. I'd stress freedom/autonomy. Freedom/automony means being bound by norms that one understands and embraces, establishing one's own laws. If we think in terms of justification...of the right to and the habit of asking why we should obey or believe, plausibly implicit in freedom/autonomy, then we see that reason is 'given' or basic.

'Why should I be reasonable ?' asks for a reason. Brandom might stress that we just are inferential animals. That's what 'rational' means.

[quote=Kant]
It is requisite to reason’s lawgiving that it should need to presuppose only itself, because a rule is objectively and universally valid only when it holds without the contingent, subjective conditions that distinguish one rational being from another.
...
...
Reason must subject itself to critique in all its undertakings, and cannot restrict the freedom of critique through any prohibition without damaging itself and drawing upon itself a disadvantageous suspicion. For there is nothing so important because of its utility, nothing so holy, that it may be exempted from this searching review and inspection, which knows no respect for persons [i.e. does not recognize any person as bearing more authority than any other—GW]. On this freedom rests the very existence of reason, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his reservations, indeed even his veto, without holding back. (A738f/B766f, translation slightly modified)
[/quote]

The second part is trickier, because dominant humans (with worldly power anyway) have withheld adult status (freedom and autonomy) from other human beings for various reasons. I take Hegel's work to be largely about the expansion of this rational tribe toward the realization that all humans are free. Is this expansion implicit in reason ? I think it basically is, though not obviously so. The big thing I learned from philosophy was the primacy of the social. I am a 'we' before I am an 'I.' To speak a language is to run an inherited operating system, to share an always already significant lifeworld. This 'softwhere' doesn't need or care about this or that skin color or sex organ (which doesn't mean it can't be initially confused about this independence.) The developing individual primarily assimilates ideas and skills that he himself did not create. Robust and glorious individuality abases itself to be exalted, empowers itself by surrendering itself to others, listening to and learning from everyone else, submitting to the better reason, thereby transforming humiliation and error into strength. I think it was Bacon who insisted that we are the ancients, because we inherit more than all who came before us. It's as if human knowledge, call it Shakespeare, is a baby god getting fat on centuries of experience, surviving the death of his cells, we the thinkers and tinkers and stinkers who come and go, picking up tricks upon entrance and sometimes leaving behind a few before exiting. The gut level version of this is described by Ma Joad. There's just one momma's love that all us mammals share in...and maybe there's just one 'intellectual love of God' which I can celebrate as a Spinoza-adjacent atheist with you and everyone else. Is it our nature to expand and transcend ourselves ? Unless something jams us up?

Rorty didn't trust theories of human nature, but I'm not afraid to keep trying to make explicit what we are, wary of course of abuses of the phrases 'human nature' and 'rationality.' Yet I'm not optimistic. We might indeed destroy ourselves, descend into another holocaust or worse. I can even feel my way into the antinatalist who is terrified of life's shameful vulnerability and would like us all safely extinct. I was moved by David Pearce's ideas. How glorious for a product of the nightmare of Darwinian evolution to correct that nightmare, if such a project is not insane. I'll settle for Denmark at the moment. In fact, I'm seem to be fairly happy with my own life in the insane US.

Quoting Banno

Nor I - hence my disclaimer:

:up:

Quoting Luke

but it is not redundant to distinguish between P and “P”.

I agree with that of course.

'P' is letters or sounds. P, as I intend it, is the meaning of 'P.' We mean the world.

Quoting Banno

And it seems to me that this is what Davidson is saying in suggesting we give up our dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality: that there is no such separation between our true statements and the way things are. We "reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false".

:up:

It can come to look obvious even. Of course!

Quoting Pie

We mean the world.

We use the word.

On the left of the T-sentence is a string of letters, the same ones used on the right; and in between we have "...is true only if..."

Reply to Pie I think this is a point of divergence from @bongo fury. But I am not sure. I'm not sure of what he is proposing.

Quoting Banno

We use the word.

So we use the word to mean the world ?

Reply to Pie Not so much. The notion of meaning can be dropped. We use the words to make true statements.

Quoting Pie

'P' is letters or sounds. P, as I intend it, is the meaning of 'P.' We mean the world.

'P' is letters or sounds. P is a use of 'P'.

Quoting Pie

our tribal conceptual norms

Republic 493a-c:Not one of those paid private teachers, whom the people call sophists and consider to be their rivals in craft, teaches anything other than the convictions that the majority expresses when they are gathered together. Indeed, these are precisely what the sophists call wisdom. It's as if someone were learning the moods and appetites of a huge, strong beast that he's rearing—how to approach and handle it, when it is most difficult to deal with or most gentle and what makes it so, what sounds it utters in either condition, and what sounds soothe or anger it. Having learned all this through tending the beast over a period of time, he calls this knack wisdom, gathers his information together as if it were a craft, and starts to teach it. In truth, he knows nothing about which of these convictions is fine or shameful, good or bad, just or unjust, but he applies all these names in accordance with how the beast reacts—calling what it enjoys good and what angers it bad. He has no other account to give of these terms. And he calls what he is compelled to do just and fine, for he hasn't seen and cannot show anyone else how much compulsion and goodness really differ.

This talk of norms, is it an advance on Plato, or is it sophistry in modern, perhaps even scientific garb?

Quoting Pie

Why should I be reasonable ?' asks for a reason. Brandom might stress that we just are inferential animals. That's what 'rational' means.

Indeed. :up: Pinker defines reason as the use of logic to attain a goal. Which, if you accept this, supports Nazism as nicely as it does Liberalism. My concern is not the privileging reason per say but the fact that reason can underpin mutually exclusive belief systems. You still tend to begin with suppositions which are values based and not rationally derived.

Quoting Pie

Rorty didn't trust theories of human nature, but I'm not afraid to keep trying to make explicit what we are, wary of course of abuses of the phrases 'human nature' and 'rationality.

Would it be fair to say you are a romantic of a kind? I probably side with Rorty here but largely because I eschew system building and he (though dead) remains smarter than I am, so there's that...

I enjoy your use of the English language.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

This talk of norms, is it an advance on Plato, or is it sophistry in modern, perhaps even scientific garb?

One ought not discuss norms ? Or one ought not bother with glib incoherence, from an officer of the local thought police ?

Quoting Tom Storm

Pinker defines reason as the use of logic to attain a goal. Which, if you accept this, supports Nazism as nicely as it does Liberalism.

We might say that Hitler applied something like instrumental reason. Sure.

Quoting Tom Storm

My concern is not the privileging reason per say but the fact that reason can underpin mutually exclusive belief systems.

If understood in a 'thin' way, then I agree that the same reason/logic applied to different premises should lead to different conclusions.

Quoting Tom Storm

I probably side with Rorty here but largely because I eschew system building and he (though dead) remains smarter than I am, so there's that...

Rorty is deep. Some of his comments on the depths of the soul are probably often overlooked. I'm excited about the work of one of his academic sons. He advised Robert Brandom, who does take the risk of a [s]theory[/s] making explicit of human nature, updating Hegel.

Quoting Tom Storm

Would it be fair to say you are a romantic of a kind?

Tricky question ! Hegel is called a Romantic Rationalist, and the gist and feel of his project appeals to me, though I feel no attachment to or mastery of many of the details, having come at it initially through the mad atheistic Kojève. The story of a process becoming aware of itself, making its own nature progressively explicit as a telling of stories, is just beautiful. It's echoed by an amoeba transforming itself into a Darwin who only then grasps what has happened.

Maybe I'm just an ironist, thought, who also loves Sartre's Nausea. I take Shakespeare as a hero, following Harold Bloom, thinking that maybe he's the hero of an expansion that never recaptures itself, doesn't know its own depths. Public decency and private irony, something like that. As Elvis or Rorty said, don't be cruel. But in the same book (CIS), Rorty was frank about the desire to humiliate. He understood the 'festival of cruelty,' just as the program Smith seemed to.

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.

My philosophical position was initially 'pomo' and relativistic, probably because I was an alienated, artistic young adult who wanted to start rather than follow trends. But, as my biased current self might put it, I grew up, saw the logical incoherence in the presentation, developed what I now see as a better spiel (product, costume), without however (I hope) losing some perversely mystical gallows humor that takes it all as a game or a joke.

Quoting Banno

Not so much. The notion of meaning can be dropped. We use the words to make true statements.

I think that's fair. I was criticized for waxing Heidegger earlier (gently), but one might mention the 'significance' of a familiar and articulated world. Language and world and we ourselves are equiprimordial, even if we can talk about the time of the dinosaurs or the big bang.

Reply to Tom Storm
Just so you can see what Rorty's systematic 'son' is up to,...
[quote=Brandom]

One might ask whether the inferentialist approach does not require overestimating the extent to which we are rational. Are we really very good at telling what is a reason for what? How often do we act for reasons—and in particular, for good reasons? The question betrays a misunderstanding. We are rational creatures in the sense that our claims and aims are always liable to assessment as to our reasons for them. How good we are at satisfying those demands doesn’t change our status as rational. And it must be kept in mind that on this way of thinking about the nature of semantic content, it makes no sense to think of us first having a bunch of sentences expressing definite propositions, which accordingly stand in inferential relations to one another, and only then having there be a question about how many of those inferences we get right. For it is our practices of treating what is expressed by some noises as reasons for what is expressed by other noises that makes those noises express conceptual contents in the first place. Once the enterprise is up and running, we can certainly make mistakes about what follows from the commitments we have undertaken, and what would justify them. But there is no possibility of us massively or globally getting the inferences wrong (for very much the same Quinean reasons that Davidson has emphasized).

I have been arguing that it is better to think in terms of understanding than knowledge, and better to think of meaning-and-understanding (which on this approach are two sides of one coin) in terms of inference than in terms of truth. So far, I have approached this issue largely from the point of view of semantics and the philosophy of language. But there is more at stake here. For this way of thinking about semantic content goes to the heart of the question of what it is to be sapient—to be the kind of creature we most fundamentally are. It says that we are beings that live, and move, and have our being in the space of reasons. We are, at base, creatures who give and ask for reasons—who are sensitive to that “force of the better reason”, persuasive rather than coercive, which so mystified and fascinated the ancient Greek philosophers. Crossing that all-important line from mere sentience to sapience is participating in practices of giving and asking for reasons: practices in which some performances have the pragmatic significance of claims or assertions, which accordingly, as both standing in need of reasons and capable of serving as reasons (that is, of playing the role both of conclusion and as premise in inference) count as expressing propositional semantic content.

This semantic rationalism—which goes with thinking of content in the first instance in terms of inference rather than reference, reason rather than truth—flies in the face of many famous movements in 20th century philosophical thought. The American pragmatists, above all, John Dewey, used the possibility of explaining knowing that in terms of knowing how not only to assimilate our sapient intellectual activity to the skillful doings of merely sapient animals, but at the same time to blur the sharp, bright line I am trying to draw between sapience and sentience. Wittgenstein famously said that language does not have a ‘downtown’: a core set of practices on which the rest depend, and around which they are arrayed, like suburbs. But inferentialism says that practices of giving and asking for reasons are the ‘downtown’ of language. For it is only by incorporating such practices that practices put in play propositional and other conceptual contents at all—and hence count as discursive practices, practices in which it is possible to say anything. The first ‘Sprachspiel’, language game, Wittgenstein introduces in the Philosophical Investigations has a builder issuing sorderss to an assistant. When he says ‘Slab!’ the assistant has been trained to respond by bringing a slab. When he says ‘Block!’ the assistant has been trained to respond by bringing a block. From the inferentialist point of view, this does not qualify as a Sprachspiel at all; it is a vocal, but not a verbal game. For the assistant is just a practical version of the parrot I considered earlier: he has been trained reliably to respond differentially to stimuli. But he grasps no concepts, and if this is the whole game, the builder expresses none. An order or command is not just any signal that is appropriately responded to in one way rather than another. It is something that determines what is an appropriate response by saying what one is to do, by describing it, specifying what concepts are to apply to a doing in order for it to count as obeying the order. Derrida’s crusade against what he calls the ‘logocentrism’ of the Western philosophical tradition has brilliantly and inventively emphasized all the other things one can do with language, besides arguing, inferring, explaining, theorizing, and asserting. Thus we get the playful essays in which the key to his reading of Hegel is that his name in French rhymes with ‘eagle’, his reading of Nietzsche that turns on what Derrida claims is the most important of his philosophical writings (a slip of paper that turned up in his belongings after his death, reading only “I have forgotten my umbrella,”), and the unforgettable meditation on the significance of the width of the margins of the page for the meaning of the text printed there. But if inferentialism is the right way to think about contentfulness, then the game of giving and asking for reasons is privileged among the games we play with words. For it is the one in virtue of which they mean anything at all—the one presupposed and built upon by all the other uses we can then put those meanings to, once they are available. Again, the master-idea of Foucault’s critique of modernity is that reason is just one more historically conditioned form of power, in principle no better (and in its pervasive institutionalization, in many ways worse) than any other form of oppression. But if giving and asking for reasons is the practice that institutes meanings in the first place, then it is does not belong in a box with violence and intimidation, which show up rather in the contrast class precisely insofar as they constrain what we do by something other than reasons.

[/quote]

I'm going to justify this detour in terms of the jesting Pilate.
@Tom Storm got me thinking about Rorty and irony and Romanticism, inspiring me to dust off a few quotes.

Can we imagine an ironist or jester, who plays at being earnestly systematic ? The passage below has always moved me. In it, Hegel credits the gang of literary Romantics with a high but not the highest level of spirituality or consciousness or transcendence. He swallows them.
[quote=Hegel]
Now if we stop at these absolutely empty forms which originate from the absoluteness of the abstract ego, nothing is treated in and for itself and as valuable in itself, but only as produced by the subjectivity of the ego. But in that case the ego can remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morals, law, things human and divine, profane and sacred, is there anything that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it. Consequently everything genuinely and independently real becomes only a show, not true and genuine on its own account or through itself, but a mere appearance due to the ego in whose power and caprice and at whose free disposal it remains. To admit or cancel it depends wholly on the pleasure of the ego, already absolute in itself simply as ego. Now thirdly, the ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in making its individuality real in its own eyes and in those of others, in expressing itself, and bringing itself into appearance. For every man, by living, tries to realize himself and does realize himself.

Now in relation to beauty and art, this acquires the meaning of living as an artist and forming one’s life artistically. But on this principle, I live as an artist when all my action and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remains for me a mere show and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. In that case I am not really in earnest either with this content or, generally, with its expression and actualization. For genuine earnestness enters only by means of a substantial interest, something of intrinsic worth like truth, ethical life, etc., – by means of a content which counts as such for me as essential, so that I only become essential myself in my own eyes in so far as I have immersed myself in such a content and have brought myself into conformity with it in all my knowing and acting. When the ego that sets up and dissolves everything out of its own caprice is the artist, to whom no content of consciousness appears as absolute and independently real but only as a self-made and destructible show, such earnestness can find no place, since validity is ascribed only to the formalism of the ego.

True, in the eyes of others the appearance which I present to them may be regarded seriously, in that they take me to be really concerned with the matter in hand, but in that case they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint. Therefore this shows me that not everyone is so free (i.e. formally free)[52] as to see in everything which otherwise has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind just a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is at liberty either to grant validity to such things, to determine himself and fill his life by means of them, or the reverse. Moreover this virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory. So then the individual, who lives in this way as an artist, does give himself relations to others: he lives with friends, mistresses, etc; but, by his being a genius, this relation to his own specific reality, his particular actions, as well as to what is absolute and universal, is at the same time null; his attitude to it all is ironical.

[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm#s7-3

He claims to include and digest The Irony, making this plausible by stressing what's shallow in it (ignoring its mystical depths.) But is this possible ? The 'Irony' is like Chaos or the womb of the gods itself. Hegel solidifies on its surface. Hegel, who knocked up his landlord's wife.

It's fun to imagine Hegel as an Ironist who merely pretended be the greatest of earnest systematizers. Or maybe he did swallow Irony, along with its mystical depths.

For at the stage of romantic art the spirit knows that its truth does not consist in its immersion in corporeality; on the contrary, it only becomes sure of its truth by withdrawing from the external into its own intimacy with itself and positing external reality as an existence inadequate to itself. Even if, therefore this new content too comprises in itself the task of making itself beautiful, still beauty in the sense hitherto expounded remains for it something subordinate, and beauty becomes the spiritual beauty of the absolute inner life as inherently infinite spiritual subjectivity.

But therefore to attain its infinity the spirit must all the same lift itself out of purely formal and finite personality into the Absolute; i.e. the spiritual must bring itself into representation as the subject filled with what is purely substantial and, therein, as the willing and self-knowing subject. Conversely, the substantial and the true must not be apprehended as a mere ‘beyond’ of humanity, and the anthropomorphism of the Greek outlook must not be stripped away; but the human being, as actual subjectivity, must be made the principle, and thereby alone, as we already saw earlier does the anthropomorphic reach its consummation.

The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom. This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.
...
But the determinate being of God is not the natural and sensuous as such but the sensuous elevated to non-sensuousness, to spiritual subjectivity which instead of losing in its external appearance the certainty of itself as the Absolute, only acquires precisely through its embodiment a present actual certainty of itself. God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself.

Quoting Banno

One feels like saying that "what makes the statement true is..." And here one wants to finish with "the statement itself", but that is wrong;

Why do you say that’s wrong? This is what I have been guarding against from the beginning. If it were the statement itself that makes a statement true, then there could be no false statements; every statement would be true by virtue of being a statement. If - as you say - this is wrong, then it cannot be that nothing makes a statement true. So if it’s not the way the world is (correspondence/realism) that makes a statement true, then what (antirealist thing) makes a statement true?

Quoting Pie

Can we imagine an ironist or jester, who plays at being earnestly systematic ?

Gore Vidal, although not a philosopher, springs to mind. :wink:

Brandom:But if inferentialism is the right way to think about contentfulness, then the game of giving and asking for reasons is privileged among the games we play with words. For it is the one in virtue of which they mean anything at all

Nice.

Brandom:Again, the master-idea of Foucault’s critique of modernity is that reason is just one more historically conditioned form of power, in principle no better (and in its pervasive institutionalization, in many ways worse) than any other form of oppression. But if giving and asking for reasons is the practice that institutes meanings in the first place, then it is does not belong in a box with violence and intimidation, which show up rather in the contrast class precisely insofar as they constrain what we do by something other than reasons.

I think this is well put and interesting point. I wonder what a Foucauldian riposte to this would be. Often felt that the postmodern challenge to rationalism and science and progress and its constant urge for reinvention is like a form of Romanticism, but with cynicism and disenchantment where hope and love used to sit.

Quoting Luke

Why do you say that’s wrong?

If the statement itself is what makes the statement true or false, then truth and falsity have nothing to do with anything outside of statements...

In your previous post the phrase was “that which determines whether a statement is true or false”.

What I'm positing is that the way of phrasing the issue in terms of making or determining is what is flawed.

And I'm not sure that is a point of disagreement between us.

Quoting Tom Storm

Often felt that the postmodern challenge to rationalism and science and progress and its constant urge for reinvention is like a form of Romanticism, but with cynicism and disenchantment where hope and love used to sit.

Nice.

Quoting Banno

you are making an assertion, and making an assertion is attaching a truth value to a statement. You can't make an assertion without asserting that some statement is true.

Quoting Banno

in order to have this discussion we make assertions, and in order to make assertions, we make use of truth

This just seems like begging the question.

To make the assertion "Rory Gallagher is the best guitarist in the world", I think of Rory's guitar playing, perhaps imagine it, or recall an opinion I had of it, do the same for other guitar players, see how each makes me feel, render that comparison into the words I've learnt will do the job of getting someone else to respond accordingly.

If my interlocutor seems unconvinced (furrowed brow, shaking head...) I might add "...it's true!", having learnt that those words will often yield a reconsideration, at least.

I'm not seeing, in any of that game any warrant for introducing the concept of 'truth'. The game seems to play out perfectly well without it. It seems at risk of become it's very own beetle. None of us here are adding ..."is true" to the end of our assertions, we seem to be mentally capable of making those assertions without running them through and additional concept filter in our minds that we call 'truth'.

We just infer that the policy seems likely to succeed (believing, claiming, asserting, using "...is true"...), then we enact it.

Where do we need a concept of truth in there? The entire concept seems, dare I say, redundant.

Quoting Isaac

I'm not seeing, in any of that game any warrant for introducing the concept of 'truth'.

So you do not take your own assertions to be true?

Ok, then.

I had thought you at least sincere...

Quoting Banno

So you do not take your own assertions to be true?

Ok, then.

I had thought you at least sincere...

Again, this is question-begging. You're taking the meaning of 'true' that you hold to construct the faux surprise that I would not hold my assertions to meet that criteria.

But it is your meaning of 'true' we're disputing here.

Yes, if I agree with you about what 'true' means, then it would be surprising if I didn't hold my assertions to be thus defined. But I don't agree with you about what 'true' means, so it is not surprising.

Reply to Banno

For clarity...

If someone asks (of an assertion of mine) "is that true" I usually take it to mean something like "if I used that policy would I likely find the same success you did?". In other words, "do you think we can share this modelling assumption"

[hide="Reveal"]Of course it might mean "I don't believe you", or "how sure are you", or "have a bit more of a think about that before you commit"...or any number of other uses.[/hide]

I don't take it to mean "does your assertion have some ineffable property we all somehow share despite it not seeming to serve any purpose nor have any warrant to think it's even there."

Quoting Isaac

I don't take it to mean "does your assertion meet some ineffable criteria we all somehow share despite it not seeming to serve any purpose nor have any warrant to think it's even there."

Nor do I. It's not ineffable; the T-sentence sets it out exactly....

Quoting Isaac

If someone asks (of an assertion of mine) "is that true" I usually take it to mean something like "if I used that policy would I likely find the same success you did?".

Is that true?

And so on.

I suspect you have an interesting point to make, but exactly what it is eludes me.

Again, when one says that such-and-such is true, I don't thinks, bar the pragmatics, that they re saying anything more than that such-and-such.

They are not saying anything like "if I used that policy would I likely find the same success you did?"

Quoting Banno

What I'm positing is that the way of phrasing the issue in terms of making or determining is what is flawed.

I assume there is some criteria by which we judge a statement to be either true or false. You agree that this criteria is not the statement itself. Are you saying that there are no criteria; that this is a flawed assumption? Then do we judge truth/falsity at random, or not at all?

Quoting Luke

I assume there is some criteria by which we judge a statement to be either true or false.

A statement's being judged true or false is very different to it's being true or false.

Quoting Banno

when one says that such-and-such is true, I don't thinks, bar the pragmatics, that they re saying anything more than that such-and-such.

But this is not what the T-sentence says. The T-sentence says that "p" is true iff p.

What you've given above is an account of my actions regarding p - asserting "p is true" is the same as asserting p - Which is Ramsey's position.

In other words, asserting "p is true" does the same thing as asserting p (in the cases we're concerned with here).

The T-sentence goes beyond this redundancy to claim there is a property 'truth' which attaches to propositions and is met is the proposition is...[and then restates the proposition but pretending not to be stating it by omitting the quotation marks]

Quoting Isaac

...and is met is the proposition is...

Typo... not sure what this is.

Nice rendering of Ramsey, though.