A judgment about the relation between meaning and something else is the difference between P's being true and P's being called "true"? — creativesoul

It's what "being true" is--when you make a "positive" judgment about the relation (for example, judging that "yes, the proposition corresponds to this fact from my perspective," rather than "no, it does not," which would be the "negative" judgment--aka the proposition is false). "Being called true" occurs because one has made the positive judgment in question.

And again, no, I wouldn't call the judgment a belief. If a belief is strong enough, one makes a claim that so and so is the case, as in factually the case, where the claim can be wrong (but the subject believes that it's the case until convinced otherwise). That's not the sense in which I'm using "judgment" here. The judgment here is simply a personal assessment as to whether the meaning the subject has applied has the positive relation in question (such as correspondence, for example) to something else (such as facts from the subject's perspective, if we're talking about correspondence; if we were talking about coherence instead, for a different example, the positive judgment would be "yes, this coheres with the other propositions I have assigned "true" to).

As I note, it's a judgment about the relation between a proposition and something else. I wouldn't say that judgments in this sense are beliefs.

No, space isn't something separate from locations, separate from extensional relations. It's identical to them. The orbit between the orbit of Venus and Mars is where the Earth is located, that's its location. It's not located "in" something else that's akin to a container.

Right

If galaxies were moving apart themselves then there should be a centre to the expansion. With a centre to the expansion, the rates of expansion would vary according to distance from the centre - things on the edge of expansion moving faster that things close to the centre. — Devans99

There would only be a center in an abstract sense. It would be in the sense that we can basically "triangulate" a relational center. Rates of positional change would be an empirical matter.

I don't think nominalism leads one to believe that if two people contemplate the same proposition that their brain states are similar. — frank

They can't be contemplating the same proposition. What I said is that they can be similar.

Again, as I wrote, "They are locations, and locations are always defined in terms of relative extensional relations."

So, for example, the Earth is located between the orbits or Venus and Mars.

There is no "balloon itself," things moving apart are simply changing extensional relations.

I have no idea beyond "somewhere on Earth," but presumably you know your address.

The mistake that's commonly made is to think of space as a container (and to think of it as a container that could exist on its own, like an empty box to use a rough analogy)

Where is my location located? — AJJ

"Located" adds nothing there. "Where is my location" is the same thing. It makes no sense to say that's not a location.

It has a location--a lot of them, actually because that's what space is.

Locations aren't literally in a container (that is space). Space is the extension of matter and the extensional relations of/between matter. Space doesn't exist as "something in itself" and it's not a "container" that things are in.

Location is extensional relations. We can't say that locations have no locations.

Sure, that was my point and objection to your view view that there isn’t anything with no location in time or space. — AJJ

Your objection was that it would make no sense to say that locations have no location? Ohhhkay.

So if you had a universe of two locations, for example, it might be the case that each location is two meters to the right or alternately the left of whichever point we're using as the reference point.

They are locations, and locations are always defined in terms of relative extensional relations.

It would make no sense to say that locations have no location, right?

It's in the tradition of treating truth as a property of propositions. (Where propositions are usually understood as the meanings of statements.)

So in your view matter isn’t extended within space? Just extended? — AJJ

You can say "within space." It's a manner of speaking about extensional relations. That's what space is.

I think you'd need to argue for this. It's not a scientific conclusion. — frank

It's ontology/metaphysics. Science doesn't really comment on it either way. I'm a nominalist on the nominalism vs realism (on universals/types) issue.

Space is location. It's the extension of matter/the extensional relations of matter.

Space isnt something that exists "on its own," independent of matter, and it's not a container of any sort. Same with time.

This is reposting something I've posted here a number of times over the years, but here it is again:

‘P’ is true for S iff S judges ‘P’ to have relation R to either S’s phenomenal P, and/or S’s stock of previously adjudged true propositions, depending on the relation R. Relation R is whatever truth theory relation S feels is the appropriate one(s)—correspondence, coherence, consensus, pragmatic, etc.

So in other words, what it is for some proposition, 'P' (quotation marks denoting the proposition literally as a sentence), to be true to some individual, some S, is for the proposition to have the relation R to S's phenomenal P (their phenomenal perception etc. of some state of affairs) or their stock of previously adjudged true propositions, in S's judgment.

So you're pondering proposition P.

P is your brain state.

I can't have your brain state because I don't have access to your brain.

Does that mean we can't ponder the same proposition? — frank

Correct, they're not going to be identical, but they can be as similar as, say, two copies of a music CD.

The universe has no location in time or space. — frank

Sure it does. It is all locations of time and space.

A proposition has no location in time or space. Does that figure in your view? — frank

I buy that there are propositions. I don't buy that there is anything with no location in time or space. On my view, meaning is mental, and mentality is a subset of brain function. So the location in time and space of propositions on my view is identical with the locations in time and space of particular brains.

Sure, I'd say it is. Remember that propositions are the meanings of statements. So it's the meaning of something like, "My keys are on the dresser." We certainly think in those terms often.

There are just things that people generally agree upon or generally accept. — thewonder

Do you discover that through inquiry?

(I'm also a relativist, by the way.)

If you extend your logic here you will realize that there's no way to match what we see with any purported mind independent existence of the things we see. — Janus

Since I know we won't resolve what counts as empirical or not, and I think this is worth commenting on, I'll start a second thread for you to argue with: what we're matching is a proposition with a state of affairs. The way we do that is by thinking about what we mean by the statement in question, and judging whether we consider that to be the "same" (more or less), as the state of affairs that we're focusing on, and that's obviously going to be from our perspective.

(And maybe it's worth commenting again, for other folks who might be reading this at some point in the future, that the above is framed in terms of correspondence, whereas my truth theory is actually a meta-theory that's not just about correspondence, even though correspondence is what I personally use.)

By "no congent support", do you mean to say that no idealistic philosopher ever advanced an argument that convinced you, or that they are all fundamentally flawed? — Echarmion

They're all flawed.

Most arguments in philosophy in general, proportional to the extent to which they're presented more formally as arguments, are pretty stupid, if they're taken as anything but a formalism.

The question as to whether there are mind-independent objective facts is not en empirical question. — Janus

Yes it is. Maybe look up "empirical" in a dictionary? Let's settle this part before moving on to additional issues.

If instead we say that what is objective is what everyone agrees on — leo

How are you encountering other people to agree with, by the way?

then some experiences and observations made me realize I was mistaken — leo

Just curious what those experiences and observations were.

He's just saying that if you use the variable to refer to something, then that thing exists as something, whether it's just an idea or description or whatever it is.

Seeing and perception are not the same. — Banno

They're not the same only in the way that a Yorkshire Terrier and "dog" are not the same.

It has little or nothing to do with "identification" as ↪Terrapin Station erroneously asserts (but as usual does not explain). — Janus

What has to do with identification is "Jesus is God."

There's something we're calling "Jesus" and something we're calling "God." If they turn out to be the same thing, so that the identity statement "Jesus is God" is correct, was it the case that necessarily they turned out to be the same thing--that is, would they have to be the same thing in all possible worlds?

It's the same question as whether "Hesperus is Phosphorus" is a necessary identity.

And the issue I brought up is that if we believe that Hesperus is metaphysically necessary, does that have any implication for whether it's necessary that Hesperus is Phosphorus? I say that it does not.

Of course, I don't believe there are any necessary identity statements period. And a fortiori, I don't really buy the notion of rigid designation beyond it being a way of saying that particular individuals can stipulate rigidity for a way that they're going to use a term, no matter what. I'd agree that we tend to use proper names in a rigid way--once we christen a baby "Richard Milhous Nixon" we tend to continue thinking of and calling that person "Richard Milhous Nixon" whether he becomes president or a janitor, but we wouldn't have to.

That someone else--Spinoza, Kripke, etc. might disagree with me is irrelevant, unless someone has specified that they only want to know what Spinoza or Kripke would say.

It doesn't exclude change, it only excludes equivocation. Whatever you're referring to with "A" needs to be the same in all instances of "A." Otherwise it's the fallacy of equivocation.

There is, of course, a world that exists outside of myself, but, all that anyone knows is situated in their own subjective experience. — thewonder

Which is similar to saying that all anyone takes is situated in their own manusive experience.

Well, yeah. Duh. You have to use your arm/hand to take things with your arm/hand. That's just like you need to use your brain in a mental capacity to know things because knowing is something you do with your brain in a mental capacity. But we can't conflate that with what we know. We can't conflate the manusive with what we take. We're not taking our own arm/hand, even though we need to take with our arm/hand.

Re truth, again, I agree that it's not objective, but because of what I explained earlier (and I'm explaining in far more detail re the conversation with AJJ)

Feel free to explicate that if that was really your intention, but without the questions. — AJJ

You're not going to understand it if you don't think about it in a focused way. The questions are designed to do that.

What I should have asked you was about the relation between a description or meaning or whatever you'd claim and the state of affairs in question. Correspondence or matching is a type of relation. So where and how would you say that relation obtains? For example, the relation of being "the parent of" obtains via an entity being temporally prior to another and having causal connections to the later developing offspring. Or the relation of "being to the left of" obtains when two things are looked at from a particular frame of reference and one thing is spatially oriented towards the other in a particular way from that frame of reference.

The matching or correspondence relation would have to obtain somehow, where we'd need to be able to describe just what's going on that amounts to the relation.

Oy vey. I'm trying--unsuccessfully, apparently--to impart an understanding of the issue re "matching" or "corresponding."

A description is a picture in words — AJJ

It's obviously not literally "a picture in words." How could it amount to being "a picture in words" aside from someone thinking about it that way?

And a description isn't the same as what it's describing but it has what relationship instead?

So matching isn't a matter of them being the same. What is it a matter of instead?

I infer everything from subjective experience. What other experience does a person have of the world? — thewonder

Your experience is subjective, but what it's experience of often isn't subjective.

Imagine we have the word "manusive," defined as "of an arm or hand." Manusive taking is something your arm & hand do. But what you take isn't manusive. You're not taking your arm or hand. You're taking things like cookies, baseballs, etc. Subjective experience is the same.