A problem for the deflationary theory of truth
According to the deflationary theory of truth, nothing is added to the assertion, "The cat is on the mat.", by saying the "The cat is on the mat is true.", since to assert it is to say it's true.
However, the cat might not be on the mat, and thus the assertion could be false. What makes the statement true or false? Whether the cat being referred to is actually on a mat. And that's a situation in the world, which we might call a state of affairs or fact of the matter. It is the world which makes statements about the world true or false. But this is the correspondence theory of truth.
A deflationist might respond that it is the rules of particular language game which determines whether a statement is true or false, and not correspondence. But when it comes to propositions about the world, the language game dictates that correspondence with the world is what makes the cat on the mat true or false.
Otherwise, the "The cat is on the mat.", is either a meaningless statement, or true by definition. But this isn't how we use language to talk about actual cats on actual mats.
A deflationist might try to sidestep the observation above by saying that correspondence requires a commitment to realism about cats and mats in order to make such assertions true or false, when the language game is merely requiring empirical justification.
This runs into a difficulty. Scientific statements are not true, they are rather confirmed by experiment and consistency with existing theory. But this is conditional upon future testing and theoretical development. Thus an empirical justification does not make statements about the world true. However, ordinary language does say that a particular cat is either on a particular mat, or it is not. That's a true or false statement in the ordinary language game, not a conditional scientific fact.
As such, if the deflationist wishes to use scientific criteria to avoid correspondence, they are changing the language game.
However, the cat might not be on the mat, and thus the assertion could be false. What makes the statement true or false? Whether the cat being referred to is actually on a mat. And that's a situation in the world, which we might call a state of affairs or fact of the matter. It is the world which makes statements about the world true or false. But this is the correspondence theory of truth.
A deflationist might respond that it is the rules of particular language game which determines whether a statement is true or false, and not correspondence. But when it comes to propositions about the world, the language game dictates that correspondence with the world is what makes the cat on the mat true or false.
Otherwise, the "The cat is on the mat.", is either a meaningless statement, or true by definition. But this isn't how we use language to talk about actual cats on actual mats.
A deflationist might try to sidestep the observation above by saying that correspondence requires a commitment to realism about cats and mats in order to make such assertions true or false, when the language game is merely requiring empirical justification.
This runs into a difficulty. Scientific statements are not true, they are rather confirmed by experiment and consistency with existing theory. But this is conditional upon future testing and theoretical development. Thus an empirical justification does not make statements about the world true. However, ordinary language does say that a particular cat is either on a particular mat, or it is not. That's a true or false statement in the ordinary language game, not a conditional scientific fact.
As such, if the deflationist wishes to use scientific criteria to avoid correspondence, they are changing the language game.
Comments (128)
As such, it would seem fitting that the 'burden of truth' is heavier for a scientific statement. And so I don't see why it follows that empirical justification wouldn't be enough for ordinary language statement, just because it is not enough for a scientific statement.
It's also perfectly possible that i've failed to understand your point :-).
That scientific statements don't have truth as a property inside the language game of science, but ordinary language claims do. The cat on the mat is true iff and only if there is an actual cat on an actual mat, which is really a correspondence relationship.
Because it entails the correspondence theory of truth, which is a metaphysical understanding of truth that deflationism is trying to avoid.
Why is that? One, because correspondence runs into problems establishing the relationship between world and language, and two, because the analytic philosophy movement would largely rather avoid metaphysics altogether, treating it as meaningless, an abuse of language.
I mean, does mere correspondence (in the sense of empirical justification) necessarily entail a metaphysical view on truth?
Isn't that what you said in your OP near the end?
I guess that depends on whether "the cat is on the mat" entails a realist or empiricist version of justification.
Let's say I'm a BIV seeing a cat on the mat. Empirically, it's true and can be verified by others in my experience of the world. But it's not actually the case that there is an external world cat on an external world mat. It's just something being fed to me by a computer program that stimulates my visual cortex, and auditory one when I experience others telling me they see the same thing.
So the question becomes is the statement, "The cat is on the mat", true iff and only if there is an external world cat on the mat, or can it be true if the cat and mat are empirically verifiable?
IOW, what sort of claim is ordinary language making? The reason for mentioning science is that scientific claims are very aware of making such distinctions, and it's quite possible that we could be wrong about what constitutes a cat on a mat, despite appearances. Maybe our best scientific theories would tell us that cats and mats are actually atemporal holographic projections that our brains turn into ordinary objects, or what have you. Something that is very far from ordinary conceptions of what it means for a cat to be on a mat. Or maybe the cat is in some complex superposition with the world we can't observe, but can model mathematically.
Science isn't really concerned with cats on mats, but scientific claims are couched in terminology that is provisional, because we can always be wrong about facts and theories. Therefore, science isn't really about truth, but rather empirical justification. So there's an important distinction to be made between the two, given that we can be wrong, and therefore our claims can be false.
In order for that to be the case, there has to be a difference between truth and empirical justification. Otherwise, how can we be potentially wrong? Fundamentally, the problem with deflation is that assertions can be false, so what makes the distinction between being true and being false? That's what any theory of truth has to grapple with.
My guess would be that ordinary language is only making claims about empirical verifiability. Ultimately it's about utility it seems to me, i.e. communicating meanings to eachother. I don't think ordinary people have a metaphysical theory of truth, eventhough they probably do believe, as most eveybody does, that there is an external world cat on the mat.
To this part i'd say my first response is still relevant. Science is doing a lot more than making mere provisional theories about simple particulars like there is a cat on the mat. In fact it would seem somewhat weird to say that 'there is a cat on the mat' is only a theory, even in science. There's the more universalising predictive element in science.
Or put in another way, there not a whole lot of different ways to empirically verify if there's a cat on the mat. To empirically verify Newton's theory of gravity however, you can play with a host of different variables... and find out that the theory doesn't hold in black holes for instance.
To distingish between true and false in ordinary language you just (empirically) verify if it's the case or not. And again if you're not entirely sure yet or there is a dispute... I mean, this is not perfect, but it seems to work most of the time anyway.
I think you're drawing a distinction between scientific and ordinary claims here that has its own difficulties. I don't see why scientific statements couldn't be true. Yes, they are provisional in the sense that new information may come up that cause scientists to reject them. But that's true for ordinary statements as well. You might find that there was no cat on the mat after all, it was instead a trick of the light or some such.
Per the OP, I don't think there is much difference between a deflationary view and a correspondence view in practice. The language game just is that there are things in our shared experience that we talk about (and that we generically call "the world"). If we decide to call this object a "cat" and that object a "mat" then we can also talk about the relation between them. Aristotle's, "to say of what is that it is is true..." applies equally well whether cats and mats are intrinsic features of reality, objects in the computer game we are playing, or projections within a hypothetical matrix.
Good points, so even if ordinary language clams are empirically based, there's still a discrepancy between truth and verification. Because we acknowledge that an empirical claim can be wrong. Well, what allows for this possibility? Clearly, it's something more than just seeing that the cat as on the mat, or performing whatever current experiments.
The answer is that it's the actual way things are that makes a claim true or false, and not just looking to see whether the cat is on the mat, or performing some experiment. And this leads back to the correspondence theory of truth.
It is the distinction between appearance and reality. It can appear to us that a claim is true, and yet it actually be false. An experiment can confirm a theory for now, yet that theory can turn it to be wrong in the future.
Looking at 'the cat is on the mat' in that light, I think the language game theorist would be interested in what I would do if somebody said that to me. I might go and look for the cat at the place where I had last seen the mat. If it was there, I might then chase it away, or stroke it, depending on how I felt about the cat. If it wasn't there I might go back to the first person and say 'It's not there any more. When did you see it there?' - another speech act. These are the acts that might arise consequent on the speech act 'the cat is on the mat', given the way we play the language game.
I think there's a pragmaticist element to the correspondence picture, which means that it is not an absolutist theory, but an intersubjective account. A statement that the cat is on the mat would be true if no one could have any possible reason to doubt it. Such an account of correspondence truth really makes no metaphysical assumptions about the ontological status of things in themselves, although it would also seem to be the case that we generally have no reason to suppose that the things we publicly experience, which are beyond any reasonable doubt as to their being experienced, tell us nothing at all about what exists independently of anybody's opinion about it.
Right, but what does that have to do with the truth of the statement? Because part of our various language games is that various statements can be true or false.
Yes, they are different things. But I think the point that the deflationists are making is simply that the explicit assertion of truth about a statement doesn't add anything that wasn't already implied by the statement itself. They are not making any claims about the role of verification.
That is, if the statement "the cat is on the mat" is true (or false) then the statement "it is true that the cat is on the mat" is similarly true (or false).
But that's a trivial observation at best. What's interesting is what makes a statement true or false. We already knew that "The cat is on the mat" was asserting a proposition. Focusing on that doesn't resolve any of the issues around truth.
I think so as well. Saying the cat is on the mat involves meaning about cats and mats and what it is for that statement to be true or false, and why we would think so, but also how we can get it wrong.
Placing a sharper point on it...
Saying "the cat is on the mat" involves meaning between "cats" and cats, "mats" and mats, and the phrase "on the" with what is otherwise a non-linguistic spatial relation between the cat and the mat. The mental connections(associations, correlations, etc.) drawn between these things are precisely what makes the statement meaningful. If, and only if, the meaningful statement corresponds to reality; fact; the way things are; the unfolding events; etc; then it is true.
The T-sentence shows this rather nicely... although it's not meant to do so. It does nonetheless. On the left is the meaningful claim and on the right is what must be the case in order for the claim to be true(in order for it to correspond to fact/reality).
Right, the is true part is asserting an accurate linkage between world, belief, meaning and language.
The snow is white is true if, and only if, the snow is white. This shows that is true adds the additional meaning to a sentence that there is a linkage to something that makes the sentence true.
But the snow could be yellowish or brownish, and thus the statement doesn't link up with the actual color of the snow, and is therefore false.
If we aren't discussing any particular patch of snow or cat, then the statement isn't true or false, except in the general case that snow is white when it's not mixed in with something that alter's it's reflective property. And of course there's nothing general about cats on mats. Cats could sit or not sit on any number of surface areas.
So again, truth is something about the world for these kinds of sentences.
I actually reject this account. Here's why...
Adding "is true" to a belief statement adds no additional meaning. That is because all belief presupposes it's own truth, belief statements notwithstanding. That is precisely what makes "is true" a redundant use of language, because it adds no further meaning to a belief statement. To believe a statement is to believe that it is true.
What's below is metacognition at work. It is thinking about thought and belief(specifically the truth conditions for a statement thereof).
"The cat is on the mat" is true if, and only if, the cat is on the mat.
On the left of "is true if, and only if" is the meaningful claim. On the right is what must be the case in order for the claim to correspond to fact/reality. The "is true if, and only if" part in the above merely 'paves the way' for the truth conditions that follow. If, and only if, those conditions 'obtain', the statement is true.
I see what you're saying, but let's take this statement:
Julius Caesar had 46,873 hairs on his head when he breathed his last breath.
Now I don't believe that, but it could be true, if he did actually have that exact number of individual hairs when he died. I have no idea how many he had, but I read that he was balding, and the average number for a full head of hair ranges from 100 to 150 thousand. So maybe 46 thousand is somewhere in the ballpark.
Let's take another one:
Life exists in some form on Mars.
That statement is true or false, but we don't know which it is, so we can't say it's true. Adding is true would mean we had some reason for thinking there is actually life on Mars.
For a deflationist, what makes "the cat is on the mat" true (or false) is for the cat to be on the mat (or not). More generally, "p" is true iff p.
The point is that a deflationist is not trying to resolve issues around meaning or verification (rightly or wrongly). They are just pointing out that there is no great mystery to the ordinary use of truth terms.
We can say that it's true regardless of whether or not it is, and regardless of whether or not we already know.
If you already believe the statement, then adding "is true" adds nothing meaningful to it.
Right, there isn't, as long as one isn't doing philosophy and is only speaking in ordinary terms. But at least as far back as the ancient philosophy, problems arose for our naive view of things such as truth just being a matter of checking to see whether the cat is on the mat. Why is that? Well, because of things like skepticism, relativism, and the problem of perception.
I get what the deflationist is trying to do, but it seems to me like it does so by ignoring what motivated the whole truth debate in the first place.
Problems will certainly arise from conflating verification with truth.
But I don't believe that there is life on Mars or that Julius Caesar had that number of hairs on his head. I don't disbelieve it either, because I just don't know, although my number is unlikely to be the correct one.
Right because a BIV can verify that a cat is on the mat, while wrongly believing this means there is an external world cat on a mat. And that's essentially what the ancient skeptics were saying. That we couldn't know whether our statements were true.
So you do not believe them. Is that a problem aside from irrelevancy? The conversation is about belief statements.
You lost me here...
The BIV can verify their statement that a cat is on the mat, but the statement is false, provided that the BIV thinks the cat is an external object and not just a sensory impression. A BIV never perceives a real cat.
However, it's interesting to note that if a BIV is an idealist, their statement is true.
That doesn't quite seem right as the BIV hypothesis is consistent with physicalism. Their experiences might be manufactured but they're still physical (i.e. brain states or whatever). So perhaps you meant to say that if the BIV is an anti-realist then their statement is true?
Sure. As long as "The cat is on the mat" is understood to mean my perception (or experience) of a cat on a mat, and not of a cat independent of perception.
What's interesting here is that the meaning a speaker intends for a statement can effect it's truth conditions.
As such, we can't really determine whether a BIV is right or wrong in saying that the cat is on the mat without knowing what they mean. What if they somehow realized or became convinced they were envatted? Then the cat on the mat means electrical stimulation of their visual cortex, or code in a computer program, which is certainly very far form the ordinary understanding of a cat being on a mat.
"The cat is on the mat" solipsist version is different from "The cat is on the mat" realist version. What makes the solipsist version true is simply the appearance of a cat on the mat. What makes the realist version true is whether the real cat is actually on the mat, despite appearances.
It's true that normally we don't have reasons to doubt the appearance of a cat on a mat, but it's possible under certain scenarios. Those scenarios won't make any difference to the solipsist. It's all just appearance in their mind.
Is true performs a different role for the same sentence, depending on one's metaphysical commitments.
Your last few posts seem misguided. You argue as if truth is existentially dependent upon language. It's most certainly not. While I would readily agree that the truth of belief statements most certainly is, not all belief is equivalent to a belief statement. Non-linguistic belief can be true/false. If true belief is not existentially dependent upon language, than neither is truth, lest the result is incoherence, self-contradiction, and/or nonsense.
Solipsism is a thought experiment. It is a metacognitive endeavor. It is thinking about one's own thought and belief(metacognition). Metacognition is existentially dependent upon written language. It only follows that solipsism is existentially dependent upon written language. Written language is existentially dependent upon shared meaning. Solipsism is existentially dependent upon shared meaning. Shared meaning is existentially contingent upon a plurality of minds. Solipsism is existentially dependent upon a plurality of minds. Solipsism is a fool's game based upon a gross misunderstanding of thought and belief and how they work.
BIV is the same kind of endeavor working fro the same gross misunderstanding.
As I said in my previous comment, the correspondence account of truth is not a metaphysical theory. This is in keeping with Kantian philosophy (even Heidegger acknowledges the provenance of the correspondence account). It is also the logic inherent in Tarski's formulation. I'm not sure what you're looking for beyond that.
They aren't problems for truth though. If the referred context of a claim such as "Earth is the third planet from the sun" is our shared experience (which is generally the case in ordinary use), then it is true independently of skeptical claims about BIVs and the like. That undermines skepticism and the problem of perception. It can also be seen that relativism just involves an idiosyncratic use of "true".
A truth schema is an abstraction that allows you to plug in whatever claims you like but the schema itself doesn't itself depend on any specific metaphysical claims.
Quoting Marchesk
Maybe. But it can also make it easier to identify what the problems are (and whether they are substantial).
Well, sort of.
The deflationary theory holds that truth is not a predicate. It marks out a role for truth that is distinct from predication, in much the same way that "Existence is not a predicate" marks out a special role for existential quantifiers in predicate logic.
And that has a great deal of intuitive appeal. After all, if it is a predicate, what does it predicate?
Simplest version:
"P" is true IFF P
"The cat is on the mat" is true only if the cat is on the mat.
Now given the conditional, I do not see how the objection in your second paragraph can be properly parsed...
Quoting Marchesk
...because if the cat is not on the mat, then "The cat is on the mat" will be false, and
"The cat is on the mat" is true only if the cat is on the mat.
will still be true.
It looks like a non-starter.
Yes, but the interesting thing about truth, and the reason it became a question, was in what makes a statement true or false.
Sure, we can all go look and see the cat is on the mat, and agree that's true, in an everyday sense. But that whole distinction between appearance and reality, where maybe sometimes it only looks like the cat is on the mat, resulted in serious questions about knowledge and truth, a long time ago.
Is true or false?
What makes "the cat is on the mat" true is that the cat is on the mat. The End.
You might have in mind one of these correspondence objections. If so, let me know.
Is the cat on the mat iff a particular bunch of atoms are arranged a certain way (i.e. physicalism)? Is the cat on the mat iff a particular set of qualia occurs (i.e. idealism)? These are the sorts of metaphysical answers that the deflationary theory of truth doesn't attempt to provide, but these seem to be the sort of answers that you're looking for.
Right, so what is the deflationist trying to say? The cat is on the mat iff ... what, exactly?
Right, but what does that mean? And of course, on a common sense reading, it's just looking and seeing that the cat is on the mat. But that's just the start of the matter, because philosophy isn't simply espousing common sense.
They're not answering that question.
Yeah, but it seems to me they need to. Otherwise, deflation is stating a truism.
You said this earlier as well but it's not correct. "p" is true iff p is an expression of how the word "true" is used. On that usage, a claim can be true even if no-one looks.
Similarly for Aristotle's definition of truth - it does not mention verification.
Quoting Marchesk
Right. Philosophy is an inquiry that starts with observation, not common sense.
Quoting Marchesk
"p" is true iff p is a formal rule that is derived from observing how people ordinarily use the word "true". Whether or not it does capture that use is an empirical question (which can be investigated).
Sure, but "what does that mean?" and "Is that true?" are at least prima facie not the same; Davidson put a fair amount of effort into trying to show otherwise, and still the discussion goes on.
Quoting Marchesk
Well, that's rather the point. Saying that "P" and saying that "'P' is true" amount tho the very same thing.
Deflation is a response to the various inflationary theories: pragmatism, coherence, correspondence and so on, that try to analyse the property truth. Deflation, as I pointed out before, denies that truth is a property.
But I remain unsure of exactly what your objection is. Back to:
Quoting Marchesk
Ok, so what is it in the world that makes "the bishop always stays on the same colour square" true? What in the world makes "twice two is four" true? What make "I am Banno" true?
This to show that correspondence, despite it being intuitive, itself requires considerable finessing.
So if your argument is that somehow deflation requires correspondence - and it is not clear that this is your argument - then you haven't gotten very far.
It seems to me that the T-sentence puts correspondence on display, better than any other way I can see.
Quoting Banno
Fully grasping how correspondence 'fits into' all the different sensible language use is difficult, at best.
The statement about the bishop is true because it corresponds to the rules which determine how a bishop moves. Those rules are part of the world.
The math statement is true for the same reasons.
The claim about your namesake is true because it corresponds to the name you've chosen for yourself, here on this forum.
Language requires correspondence. Deflation requires language. Deflation requires correspondence.
And yet "is true" is. So, "is true" is not equivalent to truth.
You're mixing the two. Deflationism (which has many articulations of course) argues that truth won't play an explanatory role in, say, theories of meaning. Correspondence theorists will say truth has an important role in that discussion. Similarly, for deflationists the entire theory of truth is basically the T-scheme. But for the correspondence theorist, truth can be analyzed in other terms, namely the correspondence relation between sentences (or propositions) and reality. Deflationists often criticize this correspondence relation.
In many ways the difference is just a simplified ontology given the belief we don't need all these extra additions to our metaphysics (e.g. propositions, correspondence, facts and so on).
The cat on the mat is true if and only if the cat is on the mat.
So, how in the world does a deflationist defend the second part if there are no propositions, correspondence, facts or state of affairs? Is it true by definition?
It's raining outside is true if and only if it's raining outside.
Very well and good. Syntactically, everyone can agree. However,
"It's raining outside is true" if and only if it's raining outside.
Now you have a disquotation. The left hand side is linguistic, while the right hand side is something else. What is it about the RHS that makes the LHS true? Well, it isn't true simply bu definition, since it's not linguistic. Rather, in this case, it's something about the world.
So then the question becomes how does the world make statements true or false? It's at this point that questions about the nature of truth come into play.
"2+2=5" is false if and only if 2+2 != 5.
Here we the rules of math. In this case, it might seem that 2+2=4 is true by defintion, however, someone can note that when two dinosaurs joined two other dinosaurs in the Jurassic swamp, there were four dinosaurs, not five, long before humans were around to count. And you will have the Platonists talking about how numbers must be something independent of human thought and culture. So again, you have a question about what makes "2+2=4" true.
... is incorrect. The syntax is muddled.
Quoting Marchesk
Why do you think the right hand side makes the left hand side true? That strikes me as an odd notion. An animal has a heart if and only if it has kidneys; therefor the kidneys make it true that the animal has a heart? Jim likes chocolate if and only if it does not contain nuts; therefore not containing nuts makes Jim like chocolate?
This makes no sense.
In direct speech: "It's raining outside" is true If and only if it is raining outside.
In indirect speech: That It is raining outside is true If and only if it is raining outside. The subordinate clause "It is raining outside" is governed by the verb "is".
But your
Quoting Marchesk
is just ill-formed.
You're goofing the syntax.
"The cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat.
Deflationists don't argue that there's a correspondence relation that maps propositions to states of affairs. Truth, in other words, is not taken to be a substantive property that a proposition had. Rather (again, depending on the account) will mean that truth is really all and only about the linguistic conventions governing the predicate "is true".
The mistake you're making is thinking that the T-scheme (
is true iff p) assumes correspondence. It doesn't, that's just a nice heuristic to get one to understand the schema but it's not actually assumed in the schema. Many philosophers who aren't correspondence theorists still accept instances of the schema.
Really? Despite the T-schema and the disquotation?
The cat is on the mat.
By itself, this is neither true nor false. Is true adds something to the sentence. It's saying two things:
1. The sentence is not false.
2. There is an actual cat on an actual mat being referred to.
#2 is why the sentence is true and not false. Without that, you have a meaningless assertion. There is no necessity to cats being on mats, so it's not a necessary truth, or true by definition.
As such, the RHS (the disquoted side) is what makes the sentence true or false.
And that's a totally trivial observation that nobody ever disagreed with. Of course we have a linguistic agreement on how truth and false are to be used.
Pilate: "What is truth?"
Jesus: "A linguistic convention governing the predicate 'is true'."
Pilate: "So everyone who heareth the truth is just agreeing that 'is true' is a linquistic convention? Well alrighty then, there's nothing controversial in what you're saying. Let me have a talk with the Jewish leaders. Those silly goats. They thought you were claiming to be a god or something, but you were just taking about language games the whole time."
Are you serious? I just said that on the deflationists account there is *nothing* more to truth than the conventions that govern it's usage as a predicate. Literally every other theory of truth denies this, especially correspondence since truth is not simply a predicate with use-conventions. It articulates the instantiation of a relationship (correspondence) between do two ontologically distinct kinds of things (sentences/propositions and facts) thus yielding the substantive property of truth as held by the proposition.
Again, the T-scheme does not make reference to facts or correspondence with the use of p.
1)
is true
2) if and only if
3) p
Hence it's perfectly compatible with non-correspondence theories like deflationism.
Okay, I mean nobody disagrees with saying that true and false are linguistic conventions we agreed to. That's not what's of importance. We could have used any word to denote the meaning behind true and false. And it's the meaning that's at stake.
What the defalationist is saying amounts to there being no meaning other than the lingustic convention, which sounds prima facia absurd, and what I'm trying to argue against.
Right, but this is merely a rule in logic and says nothing about how we apply assertions to the world or other domains.
The cat is on the mat isn't merely a logical proposition. It's a statement about the world. It's only true if there is an actual cat on the actual mat being talked about. Otherwise, it's either false or meaningless (if not referring to any cat/mat).
This is better. The problem is that Line 3 is what makes line 1 true. Explaining how that is the case is where correspondence and the other theories of truth come in.
So I'm not sure what the deflationist is trying to say here. Are they denying anything else needs to be said about the relationship between Line 3 and Line 1? Because questions about how we know that the snow is white are going to rear their head at this point.
Consider we're inside and the weather report says it's snowing out side. So I say,
"The snow is white".
You go out and look and say: "Nope, it's actually yellow."
And I"m like, "Bro, snow is white, stop lying!"
But then I go and look and I see that it is yellow, because you took the chance to unburden your bladder there.
So that is a question of what is meant by "snow is white". If you are talking about the reflective properties of snow, that is one meaning. If your friend is talking about the color of some particular patch of snow, that is another meaning. One may be conventional, another idiosyncratic. Or both may be conventional meanings, depending on context. The truth schema allows you to choose whichever meaning you like based on your metaphysical or pragmatic preferences. Which is to say, it's not an issue about truth.
What's the point of my replying to you if you do not address my writing?
Quoting Banno
I did address your writing, just not the kidney part, because it's irrelevant since kidneys are not hearts.
My temptation now is to walk away from this thread. I'm doubting that we share an understanding of the logic involved.
My initial post was responding to the part of the OP which suggested that deflationary theory, prima facie is just correspondence theory. That's why I pointed out the crucial difference, namely eliminating the use and roles of "fact", correspondence and the like.
One may well say Correspondence is a sufficient but not necessary condition while still be a deflationary theorist, I suppose. To quote from Leeds:
WRT the T-scheme, the right side of the biconditional does not make the other side true, they re logically equivalent. So:
Does not mean "snow is white" is made true because of the whiteness of snow. It means '
Oh, I see what you're saying with those analogies. But if there is not a causal link, then how is the right side related to the left?
Alright, but that's false, because snow is not always white, just like the cat is not always on the mat. You need something else to make the two equivalent.
Well, each side will be true if and only if the other side is also true.
What are you asking?
What is truth?
Can be restated as:
Wha is it that makes a statement true, such that the cat is on the mat is not false or meaningless?
I'm failing to see how deflation addresses that question.
You do understand that:
"Snow is white" is true only if snow is white
is true even if snow is polkadot?
Ok, I think I'm about to agree with Banno that you either don't understand the logic or there's some communication issue. Because it doesn't matter. Pick whatever well-formed, true sentence you want (ignoring Liar sentences). Append the predicate "is true". Those will have the same truth value, as per the T-scheme. But the T-scheme makes no comment about what truth is, so deflationary theories aren't sneaking in a correspondence theory of truth (well, maybe some are but it's not a necessary features of simply accepting the T-scheme).
It seems obvious to me this runs into a serious problem because statements can also be false, so merely stating that the cat is on the mat is not the same thing as saying the cat is on the mat is true.
Consider:
The cat is on the mat is false.
The cat is on the mat is true.
Now the question arises as to what makes the cat on the mat true or false. Am I misunderstanding in thinking that deflation needs to address this? The debate about the nature of truth seems to concern itself with what makes statements true, right?
The cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat.
If that has any meaning beyond syntax, then the obvious thing to point out is that there is at minimum an empirical cat on an empirical mat that makes that T-schema work. Otherwise, it's a meaningless logical statement that has nothing to do with cats or mats.
The blorg is in the korg is true iff the blorg is in the korg.
Is that all deflation is saying? Because that's not saying anything other than pointing out a rule of logic. It certainly not concerning itself with what the other theories of truth are worried about.
No, I don't understand that at all. You just said the snow is white in the T-schema.
Is that all we've been arguing about? Because that tells me nothing that I didn't already know. Of course a statement is true if and only if it's true.
That explains this thread.
Cheers.
I don't think that's quite right. It's not an identity, it's an equivalence. The T-scheme is a biconditional, so the deflationist (if, as usual, they accept that schema) they are simply accepting that when snow is white, the rules governing the truth predicate allows me to say it's true that snow is white. Similarly, if snow were not white (i.e. "snow is white" is false) then the linguistic conventions governing the falsity predicate allows me to use it there. (Thinking prosentential deflationism, performative deflationism)
Under Correspondence theory, it's the correspondence relation that maps the proposition onto the fact, making the proposition true. But that's not the T-scheme because
is true iff p (T(p) <=>p)
Isn't saying 'p' makes 'p is true' the case. It just means they have the same truth value. Neither is "deeper" than the other, they're equivalent. It's the same as (P->Q) ^ (Q->P), they yield each other in all models.
Whatever truth means, it is not given to us by the T-scheme because, if you read it, the T-scheme uses truth in its biconditional. It just tells me how I can use the predicate.
Then explain it. Because I see no reason to accept deflation based on what's been stated so far.
Okay, so it then has nothing to do with the question of what truth is?
It's true in a totally trivial manner. Seems to be expressing an identity, except that the first one is quoted.
What that has to do with actual snow being white or cats being on mats is beyond me. Because the cat is on the mat expresses nothing unless it's referring to a cat on the mat, which could be true or false depending on whether the actual cat is on an actual mat being referred to.
That formulation isn't the T-scheme and it explains nothing. What I'm saying is this. The T-scheme has nothing to do with the Correspondence Theory of truth, not by necessity anyway.
Quoting Marchesk
I wouldn't say nothing. Not only does it tell us how to use the predicate, according to Tarski any viable theory of truth must satisfy this convention where all the true sentences have a logically equivalent sentence (one with the same truth-value) with the "is true" predicate.
It's intended to be a necessary feature of a good truth theory, basically. That's why it's unclear if you ought to characterize Tarski's theory of truth as deflationary or correspondence, because the T-scheme works for both.
I see. That sounds right. But "What is truth" is asking something else. It's asking what makes a statement true or false, not the proper usage of the term.
Regarding "p" is true iff p, the statement on the left-hand-side is true (or false) if and only if the condition on the right-hand-side obtains (or not). It's a logical relation.
If the statement "the cat is on the mat" is true then that entails that the cat is on the mat (the condition). Conversely, if the cat is not on the mat, that entails that the statement is false.
Right, so no disagreement there.
What is truth?
If truth is just (always, for all statements) a logical relation, then there is a separate question to be asked.
What is it that makes, "The cat is on the mat", true? Because it's not a logical relation that does that. Not if there is reference to a cat and a mat in the world.
Now if the statement is just a logic statement, then these three are equivalent.
The cat is on the mat.
The blorg is on the korg.
X is on Y.
Because cat and mat are just variables that can stand for anything.
Which is fine for logic, but it tells us nothing about whether it's true or false that it's raining outside today in Lisbon.
What is it that makes something true?
Is asking about the relationship between a statement and what makes it true or false, outside of logic, because that's where the whole truth issue gets interesting. That's my understanding of the issue.
In ordinary usage, "The cat is on the mat" is not expressing a logical proposition, but rather is making a statement about a situation in the world. And it is that situation which makes the statement or false, not logic. That's how true and false is used outside of logic.
It is simply a schema for what it means for a statement to be true. In this case, it is the cat being on the mat in the world that is the condition that would obtain (or not).
Quoting Marchesk
The statement is any meaningful declarative sentence that can be expressed in some context. The logical relation is the two-way entailment between the statement and the truth condition.
Quoting Marchesk
If you want to know whether a statement is true or false, then you need to go out and look. The truth schema won't help you with that. It just tells you what condition needs to obtain in order for the statement to be true.
Quoting Marchesk
Yes, the statement can be an ordinary empirical statement. But the relation between the statement and the truth condition is a logical one.
Right. It's the going out and looking which is important.
Quoting Andrew M
But it's only giving a logical definition for truth. It's not specifying the actual condition that would make a statement true or false.
Quoting Andrew M
However, that relation doesn't make the statement true or false. It's whether the condition was satisfied or not.
The correspondence theory is saying that what makes statements true is their correspondence to something else, which would be something about the world for empirical statements. The deflationist is saying, nah, truth is just the logical relationship between a statement and truth.
But the deflationist is leaving the satisfying of conditions off their account of truth.
The cat is on the mat is true if and only if there exists a specific cat in the world on a specific mat in the world being referred to, when making an empirical claim.
" I love you" or "Make America great again!"? What is their relation with truth?
A deflationist does not attempt to define truth.
What is a deflationist trying to accomplish or say?
By comparison, a proponent of the Correspondence Theory of Truth is trying to account for statements being true in virtue of them corresponding to something else, such as a state of affairs in the world.
That truth doesn't involve all these other metaphysical commitments and ought not be involved in explanations of meaning because it serves no explanatory function.
Right, but how does that work?
If I want to know whether a specific cat is on a specific mat, then what makes the cat is on the mat true or false under the deflationist understanding of truth?
That truth is an unanalyzable concept.
If you attempt to present a definition, you assume your audience already understands what truth is because it's an aspect of the act of assertion.
It's too basic to communication to define.
It's why the theory is sometimes taken to treat truth as "redundant" (in a certain sense) or as a "no-truth" theory. Deflationists are, often, fine with the correspondence intuition (whenever p obtains, the proposition that p is true), but not the correspondence theory because it requires too many implausible ontological commitments, and end up creating what is essentially a more complex version of deflationism. They need to reify facts, states of affairs and fundamentally need an explanation for this "reflecting the world" relation (even when defined as an isomorphism it's unclear how it's supposed to work).
So basically there is no overall "thing" that makes statements true, only particular conditions being met, which very for each statement. Truth is just a generalization overall all those.
But some condition does have to be met, otherwise the statement is false or not truth-apt. So in the case of the cat on the mat, there has to be some cat on some mat that's being talked about. Same for snow being white and it's raining outside.
One thing to note about those is there seems to be a general condition that's being met for the empirical domain, which is that the condition is something being a certain way in the world. That's where the common correspondence intuition comes from.
By virtue of truth being necessarily presupposed in all meaningful thought, belief, and statements thereof...
That's what I'm thinking.
Double yup. For the reason I've just put forth...
What is the difference between saying '"The cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat', and saying that "the cat is mat is true" if the state of affairs we call 'the cat being on the mat' obtains?
I think your quandary is because you are thinking of the further 'problem' of the relationship between the everyday empirical 'cat being on the mat' and some purported 'metaphysical' or absolute 'cat being on the mat', that the empirical state of affairs should correspond to.
But you can't answer that question in the way you seem to want to, because it would involve the incoherent attempt to conceptually relate something absolutely pre-conceptual to the always already conceptually shaped state of affairs of the cat being on the mat. I think the most that can be said is that we have no good reason to suppose that the everyday states of affairs we experience are not manifestations of pre-conceptual mind-independent nature.
You are simply running up against the limit of coherent human knowledge; we can never be omniscient in the way you (and everyone else, naturally :grin: ) would like.
can we see the cat on the mat? :)
In this case you would be talking about assertability conditions rather than truth conditions. That is, those conditions that would warrant someone asserting (or believing) that a statement is true.
Assertability is related to knowledge/evidence/justification.
Quoting Marchesk
There does need to be a use for the statement. But the referents need not be in the actual world. The cat and mat might be in a Harry Potter book. Or you might be considering a hypothetical where it is stipulated that the cat is on the mat.
A true (or false) statement requires a concrete truth condition. The truth schema abstracts away the specifics of that truth condition.
Yeah, in a way. We justify our claims by virtue of using those three(and other) notions as a means to convince others to assent/agree with what we're saying... if that's what you mean.
I've given the (or at least one) condition that has to be met: the conditions which lend warrant to assertion, or belief, or knowledge. Correspondence can be one such condition. But as a type of inflationary theory, correspondence theory requires more than just accepting the T-scheme to define truth.
The intuition is fine, but the theory given to try and put it on firm ground has a lot of issues as mentioned above. Facthood in particular is a real problem for the correspondence theorist. Are there negative facts? Facts relating to conditionals and implications? These must, by their lights, be made true by something in the world but they're clearly not the sort of things that have a correspondence in the world, which conflicts with the reification of facts or states of affairs in this that theory.
I don't see why this is the case. If I have a mat in front of me with no cat on it, then "the cat is on the mat" is not true, provided I stipulate that I am talking about the mat in front of me right now. That would not seem to be a problem; perhaps you have some other kind(s) of thing(s) in mind; if so, could you offer an example?
It is true that Clinton did not win the election.
Is that made true by the fact that she didn't win the election or by the non-obtaining state of affairs that she did win it in? It's strange, because the latter sounds like a commitment to Meinongianism (which is interesting) since it's reifying a non-existent thing to make something a fact. The former seems plain unacceptable to the correspondence theorist because facts are about how the world is (states of how things really are) not how it isn't. Facts relation to disjunction and modality may also be quite strange (more so for the former).
If Clinton had won the election then ...
Is that made true by some non-obtaining state of affairs?
I can't see the problem; the "state of how things really are" is that she lost the election.
Quoting Michael
Is what made true by "some non-obtaining state of affairs"? Do you mean that if she won the election then she would have been president? That is made true by definition (assuming that some other intervening state of affairs hadn't prevented it).
But asserting the "The cat is on the mat" does not make it true. I could be lying or I could be mistaken.
What makes it true or false is whether the cat and mat being referred to is on the mat.
Another way of putting this is that to assert the cat is on the mat is not the same thing as the cat is on the mat being true.
Something like "if Clinton had won the election then Trump would have cried himself to sleep that night".
The deflationist is just saying that "'the cat is on the mat' is true" and "the cat is on the mat" mean the same thing.
Compare it to saying that I am a husband if and only if I am a married man. It does say something even if not what it takes to be a married man.
And so the deflationary account is saying something even if not what it takes for a cat to be on a mat. It's just a semantic theory of truth rather than a theory on the ontology/metaphysics of cats being on mats.
Well, that may have been true, but we'll never know. :lol:
It is true that "The cat is on the mat" if it's a fact the cat is on the mat.
It is true that "Clinton did not win the election" if something is absent (namely, an absence of Clinton winning).
To accept correspondence as explaining the truths in these cases, one may have to endorse things like negative properties. Perhaps positive facts can explain the truths of negative facts, but it's a historically difficult project for those who believe in correspondence and truth makers. But regardless, it seems an oddity when compared to corresponding to things which are actually there.
Also what said.
It is, unless one accepts possible worlds into one's ontology.
Yes, but as I said it is also true that Clinton did not won the election if something is present (namely a presence of Clinton losing).
A presence of something is always the absence of some other thing(s). The fulfilment of any potential or possibilty is always the absence of fulfilment of others.
The fact that some may see this as an oddity seems odd to me. If you see reality as a system of signs or relations, then the play of presence and absence, of possibility and actuality, seems to be exactly what you would expect to see. If reality presupposes the possibility of unreality, then what else could reality consist in but such a play?
I don't see how that's different than what I said. It sounds like if one said the winner of a chess game lost because they failed to lose. If the presence of the fact that the cat is on the mat is what makes "the cat is on the mat" true, then why does the absence of a fact make a negative claim true? The role of facts (and their ontology) seems a little odd. I mean on one hand it seems intuitively fine (even to me, who probably accepts correspondence truth), but I still struggle thinking through it.