There's a touching passage in Tarski's little Introduction to Logic that I'll quote in full here — Srap Tasmaner
First order predicate calculus does not render ontological conclusions.
Be charitable here.
On the account you gave, it would be best to remove the inconsistencies
As already noted, if logic had no ontological implications then there could be no historical progression in logic vis-a-vis ontology, there could be no better or worse logics vis-a-vis ontology, and Wittgenstein's logic could not have excluded dynamism from his ontology, <which it did>. — Leontiskos
Does any one else see this as a bad argument? Count Timothy von Icarus? @Srap Tasmaner?
If logic does not have ontological implications, then there are no better or worse logics regarding ontology.
But it remains that there may be better or worse uses of logic in ontological arguments.
Or is there a more charitable way to read this than as a transcendental argument with a false conclusion? — Banno
I had a similar discussion with Joshs re truth being true withing a given metaphysics versus being true universally. It seems to me that if you tell a lot of people, "yes, what you're saying is true...but only in your context," you're actually telling them that what they think is false, because they don't think the truth is context dependent in this way. — Count Timothy von Icarus
A charity-based metasemantics assigns L the interpretation that, when all is said-and-done, when every disposition to correct and revise is accounted for, makes the best sense of the linguistic behavior of L-speakers by making their considered utterances come out true in actual and possible circumstances, ceteris paribus. — Hirsch & Warren
Surely "true" here is short for "true in L, under I", but I find it odd they didn't just say that, since all the model-theoretic machinery seems ready to hand.
So that's caveat number 1 to your point: truth is always truth in a language, under a particular interpretation. It doesn't even make sense -- heh, in this theoretical context -- to say otherwise, to say "just plain true, dammit!" — Srap Tasmaner
The first kind of ideology is, after all, not ideology but just another name for thinking. Edge describes it as the fact that we have no access to a world independent of our senses and judgments. Indeed. No one can think without thinking and, since we are sensing creatures, without sensing either. But Edge then immediately slides into a suggestio falsi by glossing what he said as that we always think, when we think, with an inherited language-picture of the world. He then gives a further gloss that the drive to get beyond such a picture to ‘the resplendent and glorious room of objectivity’ is ‘fruitless’ because we cannot get to a place ‘independent of human thought, talk, language and belief’. Of course not. But whoever thought one had to in order to get to objectivity, to truth, to the way things are? One gets to objectivity by thinking. — Peter L. P. Simpson, A Response to Edge
Pluralism doesn't have to mean everyone's always right. It just means understanding something about how you're right, and that there may be other ways to be right. — Srap Tasmaner
truth is always truth in a language, under a particular interpretation. It doesn't even make sense -- heh, in this theoretical context -- to say otherwise, to say "just plain true, dammit!" — Srap Tasmaner
It seems to me that this is already duplex veritas; it is already a premise of quantifier variance. Hence it is part of the controversy, and someone like Sider (and me!) would already disagree with you here. Sider's (really Aristotle's) notion of "carving reality at the joints" is presupposing contextless truth, as does the idea of "ontological structure." — Leontiskos
But I can still play at philosophy, and it's an old habit. — Srap Tasmaner
I could argue against "contextless truth" and "carving nature at the joints" but I wouldn't be arguing for an alternative philosophical position. And I'd spend a lot of time arguing against misunderstanding positions I don't even hold, just out of scrupulousness I guess. Trying to think well is about as much of a program as I have. — Srap Tasmaner
But I can still play at philosophy, and it's an old habit. Even though the content of philosophy mostly leaves me cold now, I still enjoy the practice of philosophy, the challenge of understanding and evaluating arguments, all that. — Srap Tasmaner
you've already argued against contextless truth — Leontiskos
I would make the point with Aristotle that what you have said already commits you to contextless truth. — Leontiskos
There is nothing less programmatic than the simple idea that truth exists and can be known. — Leontiskos
I just heard on the radio an interview with a UCLA anthropoligist who's spent time along the migration trails from Central America to the US. He said his new book was intended just to add some nuance to the public conversation about migration, because nothing in life is black and white, and smugglers aren't just good or bad.
Which way do you want to go here? If this guy is good at his job, and it sounded to me like he is, then we might agree to say he is pursuing the truth, and is in a position to tell us truths we were unaware of. Fine.
But does that mean the statement "Smugglers are bad" must be true or false? — Srap Tasmaner
But does that mean the statement "Smugglers are bad" must be true or false? Why would it? And what do we say about Jason De León's book? That it's the truth? The whole truth and nothing but the truth? A version of the truth? A part of the truth? But a partial truth can be misleading, so the understanding of truth is not monotonic even if the acquisition of truth is. How do we judge his work? None of us saw what he saw; we can't go back in time and skulk behind a tree to see if his reporting is accurate. We could interview his informants, if we could find them, but even the people that were there might not have noticed something that he did, and anyway some of them are dead now. — Srap Tasmaner
do you enjoy its applications in other disciplines? I'm reading a Deleuze inspired social science book on addiction at the minute. — fdrake
Desiring-machines run amok? — Srap Tasmaner
Ontology, as we here think of it, is a game that only philosophers play. — Srap Tasmaner
of aesthetics — Srap Tasmaner
discussions of right & wrong, of politics, — Srap Tasmaner
But there is quite definitely no great body of everyday discussion of whether certain kinds of things exist — Srap Tasmaner
I would say that the commitment to truth is behind us, not in front of us. We can churn up the water and get it as muddy as we like, but we have presupposed truth the whole while. And if there is a question that is too complex to answer, then it is to that extent not truth-apt. But other questions surely are. — Leontiskos
He offers us a theory of man's nature that is at once consistent, fascinating, and outrageously false.
Truth is a necessity; but necessary truth is a will-o'-the-wisp. Seekers after truth --- how Hobbes despised them, all that deluded race who dreamt of a law whose seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth doing her homage! Rather, boldly conclude that truth is not to be sought, but made. Let men agree what is to be truth, and truth it shall be.
But there is quite definitely no great body of everyday discussion of whether certain kinds of things exist — Srap Tasmaner
there exists no fire in the furnace — Leontiskos
Idling semantic quibbles aside, do you mean "academic philosophy" or "amateur philosophy" or "way of life philosophy"?If there is something left for philosophy to do, I haven't been able to figure out what that is, and god knows I've tried. — Srap Tasmaner
Sigh. Look at what you quoted: — Srap Tasmaner
Caveat number 3: Goodman, in Ways of Worldmaking, makes the point that reduction is essentially a myth in science, and if that's so, he can claim for his relativism that rather than it being anti-science, it empowers him to take each science at "full force", to endorse the work of biologists and chemists, for instance, without treating them as second-class citizens whose science isn't quite as true as physics. That's appealing.
In short, you can separate their claim into two: the substantive claim, and an additional claim that all other versions are wrong. * You can take both claims quite seriously, accepting one and denying the other. If they want to fight about it, you're not fighting about the substantive claim, but about their claimed monopoly on the truth, which you have taken just as seriously and denied.
People might talk about whether there's money in the bank or beer in the fridge, but they don't talk about whether money or banks or beer or refrigerators exist.
There may or may not be a truth out there, but how people comport themselves toward it is endlessly fascinating.
there is quite definitely no great body of everyday discussion of whether certain kinds of things exist, nothing anywhere approaching the discussions of right & wrong, of politics, of aesthetics, even of whether you have enough evidence to conclude that your boyfriend is cheating on you. (Austin was fond of reading legal opinions, and thought philosophers were ignoring a great body of practical reasoning.) Ontology, as we here think of it, is a game that only philosophers play. — Srap Tasmaner
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