Guess what... People consume energy, they don't generate it. Far more efficient to just burn whatever they're using to keep the bodies alive. — noAxioms

Yes, that was dumb. Originally, the premise was that the machines were using human brains for processing, but it got changed to something more easily understandable by audiences.

It would have been better to have the machines doing it for our own good, which falls in line with what Agent Smith says in the first movie to Morpehus, and what the Architect tells Neo in the second movie. Also from the Animatrrix stories, we find out that humans started the conflict, so it would make sense for machines, upon winning, to put us in vats and find a use for us.

It is pretty easy to disprove a literal brain (a pink biological thing like in the pictures) in a vat scenario. Everybody would have two brains, one in the vat (in charge) and one in the body (epiphenomenal). Somebody would notice the difference that signals from the body one are severed abruptly at some point in the brain stem to be replaced with uncaused signals controlling the motor functions.
Defects would be a distinguishing point. Bob has an aneurysm in the vat and displays the physical symptoms of that, but doctors find a brain with nothing wrong with it. Sue on the other hand has an aneurysm in the body brain, and yet continues to function normally, even after doctors notice the event (for whatever reason). — noAxioms

This is a really good point that I had forgotten about. Same applies to the Matrix scenarios. One has to wonder what a brain operation inside the Matrix entailed from the patient, since there is only a plug into the back of the neck, and not the machines opening up pods and doing actual brain surgery. Or at least that was never shown in the movies, LOL.

nothing supports bedrock, it's foundational to all that rests on it. You can think of the rules of logic in the same way you think of resting a building on bedrock. It holds up all that follows, it doesn't need a justification. — Sam26

But this isn't strictly true, otherwise the bedrock would fall to the center of the Earth. It's true that most of the time one ignores geology when building a house, except when it's relevant to the construction. Like when a fault-line is nearby. Then you need to construct the house to withstand earthquakes.

As for why logic might need a justificaiton, that's because there are sometimes when we ask ourselves whether logic should apply or which logic should apply, as MindForged mentioned above in the debate between Intuitionists and Platonists in what constitutes a proper proof in Math. That's not settled by bringing up the language game of math, since the debate is about which rules of math to use. And that stems from a metaphysical disagreement.

1) "Schnee ist weiss" is true
2) if and only if
3) snow is white

Line 1 is about truth. Line 3 is not about truth – it asserts a claim about the nature of the world. Thus T makes a substantive claim. Moreover, it avoids the main problems of the earlier Correspondence Theories in that the terms "fact" and "correspondence" play no role whatever.

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.

1) <p> is true
2) if and only if
3) p — MindForged

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).

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. — MindForged

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.

Rather (again, depending on the account) will mean that truth is really all and only about the linguistic conventions governing the predicate "is true". — MindForged

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."

Why do you think the right hand side makes the left hand side true? That strikes me as an odd notion. — Banno

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.

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. — Banno

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.

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). — MindForged

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?

They're not answering that question. — Michael

Yeah, but it seems to me they need to. Otherwise, deflation is stating a truism.

What makes "the cat is on the mat" true is that the cat is on the mat. The End. — Banno

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.

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. — Michael

Right, so what is the deflationist trying to say? The cat is on the mat iff ... what, exactly?

That just don’t work. — Banno

Is true or false?

No ‘essence of me’ in Buddhism. Arguably, belief in such a thing is the very problem that has to be overcome. — Wayfarer

Okay right, my fault. What I meant was something that continues to be alive, to experience the state of nirvana, not simply ceasing to exist. Because suicide easily accomplishes that without needing to spend a life becoming detached.

That's one of many points on which Paul and I differ radically. I reject that statement utterly. — andrewk

Wanted to add an additional comment on this. There is a sense in which both Christianity and Buddhism are tying to find an out for this life. They're both predicated on life being fundamentally rotten. Christians hope for a utopian existence after death. Buddhists try to fix the problem by quenching desire, and which may result in achieving a final state without suffering, which could transcend this life to a more permanent state.

There are also the techno-optimists who think that science and technology will one day deliver us from the awfulness of being animals who live short lives, feel pain and constant want, and are severely limited in the capacity to experience.

Nick Bostrom has written a couple short stories on that possibility. And then's tons of scifi stories exploring that idea. The thing that all threeshare is agreeing that life generally sucks in lots of ways, and having faith in the possibility of attaining a better mode of existence.

.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. — Banno

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.

That's one of many points on which Paul and I differ radically. I reject that statement utterly. — andrewk

Of course, because you don't think there is any resurrection of the dead into a world where we don't have the incessant meaningless drive of the desires Schop and Augustino are always complaining about.

To put it in more Buddhist terms, if I really believed that following the 8-fold path and spending lots of time mediting would grant me nirvana after death, where some essence of me continued to exist without suffering in a grand sense, then I would probably buy in and make it my life's goal.

But I don't believe that, so I'm like, meh, I'm sure meditating and thinking a certain way is helpful in this life, like exercising and eating well. Kind of like going to church for the social aspect. But it's not something I'm going to base my life on, because it's merely helpful, and it's still just this life, with it's readily apparent imperfections.

Some people might object to having faith for a payoff, but let's put another way Say there was the possibility of a technology that would greatly expand your life in all dimensions. You would end up healthier, stronger, smarter, longer lived, etc than any human. But it would require dedicating your life to achieve. How many people would go after that if they thought it was possible?

That's what St. Paul was talking about, in a non-technological sense. That he would get to share in a god-like existence forever, otherwise, why bother? Also, keep in mind that Paul and many of the early Christians were legitimately persecuted, so it's not like they looked at religion from the relative ease and comfort of a modern western lifestyle, where playing tennis is just as good as going to church on a Sunday morning, because what does it really matter?

Irrefutable only means that it cannot be disproved using the data available. — Isaac Shmukler

That means just about all of metaphysics, unless there exist irrefutable metaphysical arguments. Maybe for trivial matters, like the non-existence of invisible pink unicorns.

What do you mean by 'irrefutable belief'? — Txastopher

I'm guessing the OP means beliefs that can't be doubted, which I'm not aware of any. Just about anything can be doubted. Even Cogito, ergo sum can be picked apart.

But maybe Witty's hinge propositions come close.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun? — Bitter Crank

It's really interesting that this is accepted part of the Christian Bible, given it's nihilism. But it's a really good ancient text.

One can be convinced of God by direct experience of Her. If one has had such experience, why waste time on petty, questionable arguments that pale into total insignificance in comparison? — andrewk

Because they might just be in your head, generated by having the beliefs you do in virtue of the religious culture you were raised in.

When I came to understand that my religious experiences where being generated by my brain, I stopped having faith. I understand that not everyone views religious experience and faith the same, but for me if it wasn't real, and thus true, it wasn't worth having.

To quote St. Paul, "If Christ has not risen, your faith is in vain." What's the point of going to church/temple/synagogue/mosque and praying and all that jazz if it's just made up? If you need help getting through life, then just eat, drink and be merry. Or pass time arguing over impractical issues on philosophy forums.

If you want to feel spiritual, go look at the stars on a clear night.

Alternatively, an AI might not find it's programmed goals to be meaningless regardless, and just keeps chugging along indefinitely. The whole existential crises has the unnecessary nature of human desires at it's root. Take that away, and an AI might not care whether anything is meaningful. It just computes.

There is an interesting scifi novel called Permutation City by Greg Egan where the main character is experimenting with uploading copies of his mind into a simulated environment. Most of them commit suicide upon realizing their fate. But the last one is denied this ability, so he learns to cope with being a simulation. He still has the ability to modify his code at will, so one thing he does is change his motivation to tirelessly enjoy making table legs (digital ones of course).

If we could modify our desires at will, how would that change the equation? I know sometimes I grow bored when I'd rather remain interested and engaged.

The solipsist and I can agree that the cat is on the mat. It's true for both of us. But the solipsist means something different than I do, because I take cats to have their own existence independent of me, with their own feline mental states.

"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.

So perhaps you meant to say that if the BIV is an anti-realist then their statement is true? — Michael

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.

You lost me here.. — creativesoul

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.

Problems will certainly arise from conflating verification with truth. — creativesoul

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.

If you already believe the statement, then adding "is true" adds nothing meaningful to it. — creativesoul

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.

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. — Andrew M

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.

Adding "is true" to a belief statement adds no additional meaning. — creativesoul

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.

If, and only if, the meaningful statement corresponds to reality; fact; the way things are; the unfolding events; etc; then it is true. — creativesoul

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.

In the bigger picture, I am quite confident in saying that truth, meaning, thought, and belief are all irrevocably entwined. — creativesoul

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.

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). — Andrew M

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.

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. — andrewk

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.

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.

I mean, does mere correspondence (in the sense of empirical justification) necessarily entail a metaphysical view on truth? — ChatteringMonkey

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.

And the fact that they have a correspondence relation is a problem why? — ChatteringMonkey

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 don't understand #2. What makes the laws of nature "intentional"? Can you explain intentionality? I understand it as a mental attitude where propositions are about something.

It's also perfectly possible that i've failed to understand your point — ChatteringMonkey

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.

A glass can be both half full and half empty. Kinda corny, but true. — Posty McPostface

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.