frank

I'm happy exploring behaviorism and pondering whether there really is any such thing as agreement, but my home base is to imagine that I agree with bi...

I didn't mean to say that propositions are limited to the things we agree or disagree on. We imagine there are true propositions that no one knows, fo...

I'm the janitor.

You just can't do hummus without lemons. It's unthinkable.

But you're right. Israel is the little guy. They wouldn't be there if it weren't for their strategic value to the US, which has been fading for severa...

Awesome.

Cool, thanks!

I think that when you entertain a thought, you're imagining it as an assertion, even if there was no such event. For instance, if you contemplate "the...

I'm not seeing that as tangential. I think it would highlight, especially for the naive, like me, the difference between a formal language where appar...

Would you say an AI can assert a proposition? Or are we just treating it as if it can?

I don't think comparing WW2 to the recent Gaza invasion helps me understand much. But as for the power dynamics, you know the Palestinians in Gaza ori...

I think there are two approaches to the OP, and maybe in philosophy in general: 1. You can start with ontological biases and let those views form the ...

I talked about that a lot. I don't think you saw it.

:up:

I get that. It's just that when I've tried to pin down the ontological significance of "abstract object", the answer seems to be that this question do...

Thank you!

I don't think abstract object implies any ontological commitment. It just means it's not a physical thing, but it's not a mental object like if you're...

@"Pierre-Normand" Hi! I was hoping to get some clarification from a professional. Did Frege think propositions were thoughts? Abstract objects, but ba...

Uh, ok. Thanks.

@"Leontiskos" Again, Soames explains Frege this way: "In general, when we want to refer to the thought expressed by a particular sentence, we use an e...

I think pretty clearly says that. What did you think a proposition is for Frege?

Exactly. I think Leontiskos and I are talking about different Freges. :grin:

"The first point I want to call attention to is that according to Frege, truth is a property of thoughts or propositions in the sense discussed in cha...

When Frege talked about propositions, he was talking about thoughts. Those who find that language distasteful probably shouldn't be discussing Frege a...

You appear to be agreeing that we can't have unasserted propositions in real life, even if the assertion is only hypothetical or potential.

I think the most fruitful framework for discussing that question would be one that starts without ontological commitments, with something like ontolog...

Right. Context is just part of discerning what proposition is in play.

I'll post Frege's words, and the way Soames formulates it: There's a fair amount of discussion after this this passage. This source may require a univ...

Stephen King said that fiction is a way of expressing truths that couldn't be conveyed in any other way.

In a raw sort of way. Maybe that's enough.

So the human mind finally gets a part to play in the speculations? That is pretty exciting.

I might not be understanding what you're asking, but I believe that in order for a sentence to be about something, it has to be used. Meaning is found...

I don't think anyone has made that claim. You probably need to understand the truth conditions, but not whether it's true or false.

But philosophers have been regularly thinking outside the box for millennia. That's not what Wittgenstein was talking about, is it? Wasn't he talking ...

If you understand what "the cat is on the mat" is about, it's because you're providing a phantom context for it. The OP alludes to this. There just is...

Can you give an example of that?

It's fairly clear that assertion is integral to a proposition. The question is: what does it mean to separate them? By what means does Frege do that? ...

Frege, the godfather of abstract objects, dealt with propositions, so we're going to be mixing quiche and spaghetti if we don't talk about them. An ut...

Add onto what? Are you thinking of a sentence or a proposition? If it's proposition, just examining what that is will indicate why assertion is integr...

Please quote Frege on this issue.

You need context to make that distinction. If I ask you what the weirdest city in the world is, and you say, "Berlin", you have expressed a propositio...

I was thinking this morning that skunks are assholes. My nostrils were filled with their defensive stink at the time, their last FUCK YOU to a world t...

Maybe better than starting a thread, would you want to log into the Internet Archive and read some pages from Scott Soames' book on truth? It's a safe...

No. It's basically that truth is integral to the act of assertion. If you give a lecture explaining what truth is, and I'm your audience, I have to al...

:up: In a way, the OP is asking about the extent to which meaning is use. In what circumstances can we drop use and still have meaning? This is assert...

This is the sentence in the OP that stood out to me: I believe it follows from Frege's view of truth that assertion is integral to propositions. Think...

I think that like Davidson, you have reinterpreted Tarski for your own purposes. No shame in that.

You don't get Tarski unless you understand that his truth predicate doesn't mean anything. It's not the truth we talk about in ordinary language. Don'...

We disagree about the value of Tarski's work. You don't need Tarski to play around with the T-sentence rule, though. I think that's what you're doing.

He has a pretty rigorous argument for indefinability. I think J wanted to see it too.