If, science proceeds on the assumption that "every event has a cause", and it is an "absolute presupposition", as described, such that it makes no sense to discuss whether this is true or not, then science proceeds as if "every event has a cause" represents an uncertainty. — Metaphysician Undercover

Science may have held this absolute presupposition, but modern physics forced scientists to reevaluate it, at least for the very small. Not sure whether that supports what you're saying about presuppositions equating to an uncertainty, but developments have lead people to question their presuppositions.

Oh well. It is what it is. — Michael

As all things are.

I said don't quote me on that! Yet you quoted me?! — Michael

Uhhhhh, well, I took quoting to mean something else. So not true, exactly.

I'm 90% sure it means "is", but don't quote me on that. — Michael

Well, dictionary.com says:

"3rd person singular present indicative of be."

Which brings in objectivity, time, existence and being all in one sentence.

may or may not have had the occasional choirboy, I don't know. most were sexually active but decent guys. — Bitter Crank

LOL, that was a darkly funny comment. Kind of James Gunn-like there.

Instead they're the foundations upon which claims of truth are built. — mcdoodle

So P is true iff P AND the absolute presupposition P rests upon?

Simon Blackburn is a guest on the latest Partially Examined Life talking about deflation and truth in different areas. He said empirical claims were easy: you just look and see that the cat is on the mat.

However, the presupposition underlying that truth is probably that there is an external world with a real cat on a real mat that we can perceive by just looking. Certain skeptical scenarios would undermine the presupposition, making the empirical justification false.

And indeed, he does mention attending a magic show where the illusionist performed all sorts of tricks that made it look like impossible things were happening, and as such, you can't always trust your senses.

But then again, Blackburn considers himself a quasi-realist, so maybe he's not terribly concerned about the more radical skeptical scenarios.

It is what it is. — Michael

Depends on what the definition of "is" is.

Everything is what it is. — Michael

Which isn't saying anything. Water is water.

Okay, but what makes water be like water and not like glass? Well, turns out ordinary matter has a chemical composition which determines that. And how does chemical composition determine the properties of water? Physics. And what determines physics? And now you're on to cosmology, which is one step removed from asking metaphysical questions.

Hehehe, yup, science have made metaphysics kinda irrelevant. — Christoffer

Not really. Science has been able to answer some questions that used to be metaphysical. But there are plenty of questions that we don't know how to investigate empirically. Questions about consciousness, the interpretation of QM, laws of nature, causality, the nature of time, mereology, supervenience, the nature of perception, and various debates over realism vs anti-realism.

Except, Democritus was on to something, we're still debating some of those things, like the mind/body problem (consciousness in particular). Witty didn't end the speculation. He just added to the speculation that it might largely be the result of a misunderstanding of how language works.

how it was, and how the current distinction between subject and object is an outgrowth - a cancerous one, I'd say - of a more original distinction which was far more coherent and far more interesting than it's current day incarnation. — StreetlightX

Even so, the current cancerous ones had parallels in ancient philosophy. They're not an entirely new outgrowth of something from the middle ages. And the more interesting distinction between subject and object doesn't make questions about subjectivity and knowledge of an objective world go away.

[

Also worth noting that in the medieval terminology from which the subject-object distinction derived, an object was a strict correlate of a subject, so that the two were conceptually inseperable. The esse objectivm was that which existed only for a knowing being - something was objective only to the extent that it existed for a knowing being. — StreetlightX

I don't thinks this quite works. My dreams and fantasies exist known to me, but they're subjective. So is being me. I can tell other people about my subjectivity, and to the extent it's similar to their own, they can relate to it. But there is a sense in which there is this chasm between all of us, to varying degrees. I will never know what it's like to give birth or be born blind.

Even more so, I can't know what it is to be another animal. I'm sure there are some similarities, but I will never experience the world of smell the way a dog does.

As for the medieval view on this, the subjective/objective split showed up in ancient philosophies in both Europe and Asia. It's not just a recent mistake that's been made, but rather is reflective of having minds that can dream, imagine, hallucinate, and have individual bodies which have to use indirect means to communicate experiences.

That objectivity has come to mean that which is somehow totally seperate from a subject is just an unfortunate conceptual slide which has caused all sorts of confusion. — StreetlightX

Well, science (physics in particular) paints a picture of the world very different from the one we experience, and the question of to what extent the world is like what we perceive has been around for a very long time. Does the color we experience exist in the objects, or is that just a result of having eyes that detect EM radiation in the range where photons bounce off objects? Does time actually flow as we experience it? And so on.

I have found that people are good, bad, and indifferent without respect to what they believe about god. — Bitter Crank

Isn't that the truth!

Most discussions focus on just one problem. Trump creates a new problem every week. — Michael

The problems are political, and every news organization in existence is already obsessed with the man. Trump doesn't have much to do with philosophy, other than asking why humans elect bad leaders and fall prey to populism, and wondering about the failings of democracy in general.

But regardless, it seems an oddity when compared to corresponding to things which are actually there. — MindForged

It is, unless one accepts possible worlds into one's ontology.

How is it that a Donald Trump post is the most commented on in a philosophy forum? That's disheartening.

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. — Aleksander Kvam

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.

By virtue of truth being necessarily presupposed in all meaningful thought, belief, and statements thereof... — creativesoul

That's what I'm thinking.

his is also why it's not good what many on the left are doing, viz., shutting down speech they disagree with on many campuses. — Sam26

I really, really hate that. However, usually I hear about that stuff from conservative sources that I don't trust very much. Often times, things are taken out of context when reporting so as to cause outrage in the viewer.

If someone cal tell me who the perfect arbiter of allowed and forbidden ideas is, I'll start forecasting their bias and inevitable failure... — VagabondSpectre

That's the thing. Nobody can be trusted in that role anymore than anyone can be trusted with unshared power.

Some among us would tell you 'because if we don't censor people then people like Trump can get elected", which on the surface seems to have some merit. — VagabondSpectre

So we need to protect the voting public by censoring people? That sounds anti-democratic. And how do we determine who and when to censor? Because I can imagine pro-Trump supporters saying the same thing about past presidents they didn't like.

What they don't realize is that in today's world, censorship is to popularity as gasoline is to open flames, — VagabondSpectre

That's for sure!

From a US perspective, putting someone in prison for disagreeing about how a historical even went down sounds like using force to silence someone's speech, or punish someone for saying the wrong thing.

Of course the context was Austria's participation in the holocaust and probably Irving has other motives than just being a crackpot. So it gets murky there. The reason we in the US are hardcore on speech is because if you give the government power to censure, then it can be abused. Maybe we don't care if a holocaust denier gets shut down, but what about if it's someone espousing an unpopular political opinion? What if they're criticizing the government?

It seems like Austria thinks society needs to be protected from certain kinds of crackpots, which is weird form a US perspective. Why can't society decide without using the force of law who to believe when it comes to history?

Whatever justifies or lends warrant to accepting "the cat is on the mat" gives exactly the same warrant for accepting "It's true that the cat is on the mat". — MindForged

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.

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. — MindForged

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?

A deflationist does not attempt to define truth. — frank

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.

If you want to know whether a statement is true or false, then you need to go out and look. — Andrew M

Right. It's the going out and looking which is important.

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. — 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.

Yes, the statement can be an ordinary empirical statement. But the relation between the statement and the truth condition is a logical one. — 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.

Or maybe the big flaw in democracy is that it's a vote maximizing system, as Eliezer Yudkowski suggested.

To quote the great Shania Twain:

"Man, I feel like a woman!"

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. — Andrew M

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'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. — MindForged

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.

"Snow is white" is true only if snow is white

is true even if snow is polkadot? — Banno

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.

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. — MindForged

Okay, so it then has nothing to do with the question of what truth is?

That explains this thread. — Banno

Then explain it. Because I see no reason to accept deflation based on what's been stated so far.

X is true iff x is true.

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.

is true even if snow is polkadot? — Banno

No, I don't understand that at all. You just said the snow is white in the T-schema.

Perhaps I'm missing something. My understanding is that deflation is an attempt to avoid problems that crop up with other theories of truth, because they have metaphysical implications. To avoid that, deflation is proposing an identity between making a statement and that statement being true.

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.

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. — Andrew M

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.

'<Snow is white> is true' has the same truth value as 'snow is white', because each implies the other. — MindForged

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.

My friend, there simply is not a causal link between the right side and the left side of the material equivalence. — Banno

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?

What's the point of my reyplying to you if you do not address my writing? — Banno

I did address your writing, just not the kidney part, because it's irrelevant since kidneys are not hearts.