Perhaps one can find ones way through supposedly incompatible beliefs by further articulating one’s own approach such that it is capable of subsuming alternative beliefs? — Joshs

Sure. One understanding of Hegel is that individuals and cultures progress in response to contradictions that appear in the concepts they continually make more explicit by using. Probably not 'subject' (thing that aims at coherence of beliefs), either private or communal, is ever safely free of contradictions. Instead it takes time (or even 'is' Time) for contradictions or conceptual incompatibilities to become manifest and fixed. Such fixes themselves reveal flaws. The system swells as it falls forward. (We walk by delaying a forward fall.)

Note that we don't want a string of words to correspond to cat-on-the-mat-ness. So even 'correspond' is too much machinery here and only makes a mess. — Pie

I don't understand the correspondence to be anything more than an association we all make between what we say and what we experience. For me it creates no "mess" unless we try to metaphysicalize it into theory involving reifications such as "truthmakers".

Your position is unclear to me. I understand the deflationary theory to be opposed to and different than (and simpler and cleaner than ) the correspondence theory.

Some versions of the CT look deflationary to me, so the beef may often/largely be merely terminological.

As I read it the T-schema exemplifies the idea that the sentence "snow is white" being true depends on snow being white. The logic here is that truth depends on actuality, just as with Aristotle's formula. The basis of meaning is that what we say corresponds to (in the sense of being associated with via "picturing") what we experience (or imagine). If the "picturing" is true, in the sense of hitting the mark, of being accurate, then we have truth, if not, then we have falsity.

That the cat is on the mat is a fact, not a sentence. "The cat is on the mat" is a sentence.

"The cat is on the mat" is true ≡ The cat is on the mat

The thing on the right is a fact. And the whole is true.

"The cat is on the mat" is true ≡ "The cat is on the mat"

The thing on the right is a sentence. And the whole ill-formed.

Now, where in any of this does a sentence correspond to a fact?

What might that correspondence be?

What might that correspondence be? — Banno

It consists simply in our association of the sentence "the cat is on the mat" with the cat being on the mat. We wouldn't be able to talk about anything if what we say did not correspond with (in the sense of being associated with or picturing) what we experience. This is basic.

It consists simply in our association... — Janus

And what is that association?

Here's my answer: that the cat is on the mat is a use of the sentence "the cat is on the mat". We have, not an association between two differing things, but two ways of making use of the very same thing.

Here's my answer: that the cat is on the mat is a use of the sentence "the cat is on the mat". We have, not an association between two differing things, but two ways of making use of the very same thing. — Banno

:That the cat is on the mat", sure, but not the cat being on the mat.The cat being on the mat is not a use of a sentence, but something we see or imagine. I could draw or paint it instead of speaking about it, "The cat is on the mat" is a symbolic expression, or representation of that seeing or imagining, and the two are thus associated, although not in any absolute or essential sense, but just because we do associate them

If the "picturing" is true, in the sense of hitting the mark, of being accurate, then we have truth, if not, then we have falsity. — Janus

Are we to understand the string of words as a 'picture' ? Do we really need this metaphor ?

I can see why it's tempting. We are such visual creatures that we use visual metaphors for grasping meaning.

That the cat is on the mat is a fact, not a sentence. "The cat is on the mat" is a sentence. — Banno

:up:

"The cat is on the mat" is a symbolic expression, or representation of that seeing or imagining, and the two are thus associated, although not in any absolute or essential sense, but just because we do associate them — Janus

If that's someone means by the CT, then I'd put them in my camp. But my impression is that usually an intermediate something is involved, not just a true sentence and a reality-meaning of that true sentence.

Are we to understand the string of words as a 'picture' ? Do we really need this metaphor ?

I can see why it's tempting. We are such visual creatures that we use visual metaphors for grasping meaning. — Pie

When I read a novel, for example, the events depicted, the landscapes, architecture and people described are pictured by me, and it becomes a world I am immersed in (if it's a good novel). When I read "the cat is on the mat" I picture a cat on a mat. It's a kind of generic picture, to be sure, more detail could be added; is the cat tortoise-shell or ginger? Each of those words will evoke a different picture. How big is the cat? And the mat? What colour is the mat,? Is it outside or in a room? What colour are the walls of the room? Or if outside, is it sunny or raining? And so on.

, ...

And so the correspondence theory intersperses a "picture", a conceptual scheme, between the cat being on the mat and the cat being on the mat...

No, the cat being on the mat is seen or imagined, and the words "the cat is on the mat" evoke (in a generic sense) that seeing or imagining. Doesn't work for you? When you read a good novel, you don't imagine the events, places and people being depicted?

Also, as I said earlier, I agree with Heidegger that there is no correspondence "theory"; correspondence is just an account of how we generally think about the relationship between sentences and events, places and people; real or imagined.

No, the cat being on the mat is seen or imagined, and the words "the cat is on the mat" evoke (in a generic sense) that seeing or imagining. — Janus

The cat isn't on the mat if someone pictures it to be on the mat. It is on the mat if it is on the mat.

The cat isn't on the mat if someone pictures it to be on the mat. It is on the mat if it is on the mat. — Banno

I don't see what that has to do with it. What relevance would the cat on the mat be if no one sees it or imagines it? If no one saw or imagined a cat on the mat then no one would say anything about a cat on the mat, and we wouldn't need to consider the relationship between saying and seeing/imagining, would we?

To me the terminology is not that important. — Pie

Let's call you a correspondence theorist, then.

I would like us to do more with less, so I am defending an approach that uses the string-of-words (signifier) on one side and the worldly meaning (signified object-concept) of that string on the other. — Pie

But truth bearers are already meaningful. You are now creating further issues by drawing a distinction between a truth bearer without meaning (i.e. string-of-words) and a truth bearer with meaning. What I was formerly arguing against was that a meaningful truth bearer (e.g. "snow is white") is identical with what it signifies (worldly white snow).

If you want to draw a distinction between a meaningful truth bearer and what it signifies, then this commits you to a non-deflationary theory of truth. Again:

...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. — SEP article on Truth

Your defense of the use of a meaningful, truth apt signifier/truth bearer on one side and a signified worldly object/state of affairs on the other side links truth value to truth conditions. According to the quote above, this means you have a non-deflationary theory of truth.

When I read "the cat is on the mat" I picture a cat on a mat. — Janus

Fair enough. But that's not the intention of 'te cat is on the mat.' Because we can say 'I am picturing a cat on the mat just now." We reveal the world to one another in our true claims.

Fair enough. But that's not the intention of 'that cat is on the mat.' Because we can say 'I am picturing a cat on the mat just now." We reveal the world to one another in our true claims. — Pie

I'm not understanding what you're saying here; can you explain further?

Husserl seems to be gesturing at the same 'pregiven' shared situation or primordial we-world that I'm calling the minimally specified world. — Pie

The relation between subjectivity and intersubjectivity gets complicated for Husserl. He never seems to give up the insistence on the primacy for me of my subjective vantage on the intersubjective world The world for all of us is a world constituted through my own subjectivity, which cannot be bypassed. This ‘world for us', from one to the other to the other, is constituted within MY(the primal me) subjective process as MY privileged apperception of ‘from one to the other to the other'.

“...one of the main tasks of pure intentional psychology is to make understandable, by way of the progressive reduction of world-validity, the subjective and pure function through which the world as the "world for us all" is a world for all from my—the ego's—vantage point, with whatever particular content it may have. ...”(Crisis, p.256)

“ The epoche creates a unique sort of philosophical solitude which is the fundamental methodical requirement for a truly radical philosophy. In this solitude I am not a single individual who has somehow willfully cut himself off from the society of mankind, perhaps even for theoretical reasons, or who is cut off by accident, as in a shipwreck, but who nevertheless knows that he still belongs to that society. I am not an ego, who still has his you, his we, his total community of co-subjects in natural validity. All of mankind, and the whole distinction and ordering of the personal pronouns, has become a phenomenon within my epoche; and so has the privilege of I-the- man among other men. “(Crisis, p.184)

“...it was wrong, methodically, to jump immediately into transcendental inter-subjectivity and to leap over the primal "I,"the ego of my epoche, which can never lose its uniqueness and personal indeclinability. It is only an apparent contradiction to this that the ego—through a particular constitutive accomplishment of its own—makes itself declinable, for itself, transcendentally; that, starting from itself and in itself, it constitutes transcendental intersubjectivity, to which it then adds itself as a merely privileged member, namely, as "I" among the transcendental others. This is what philosophical self-exposition in the epoche actually teaches us. It can show how the always singular I, in the original constituting life proceeding within it, constitutes a first sphere of objects, the "primordial" sphere; how it then, starting from this, in a motivated fashion, performs a constitutive accomplishment through which an intentional modification of itself and its primordiality achieves ontic validity under the title of "alien-perception," perception of others, of another "I" who is for himself an I as I am. ”(Crisis, p.185)

. What relevance would the cat on the mat be if no one sees it or imagines it? — Janus

It's true (or false) regardless of being seen or imagined.

Let's call you a correspondence theorist, then. — Luke

I wouldn't mind, except the dominant version seems to include too much machinery.

You are now creating further issues by drawing a distinction between a truth bearer without meaning (i.e. string-of-words) and a truth bearer with meaning. — Luke

It's just the use/mention distinction. To mention P, I put it in quotes. To use it, I don't put it in quotes.

My theory, which looks deflationist and minimal to me, is that there is just 'P' and P, mention and use. If 'P' is true, then P is the case and P is (a part of) the world.

Granting the truth of 'P', I suppose that one could call the mention of P a picture of the use of P.
That is the sense I can make of correspondence.

But note that @Janus is mentioning the visual imagination, which seems connected to a third thing (an imagining of P or something) that's not use and mention as described above. I take some CT proponents to use three parts in their explanatory machine, where I want to use exactly two.

It's true regardless of being seen or imagined. — Banno

But any truth has relevance or indeed substance only insofar as it could be seen to be true, or stipulated to be true in a fiction.

I'm not understanding what you]re saying here; can you explain further? — Janus

If I tell you that there are plums in the icebox, I'm talking about those plums in that icebox. I'm not foregrounded my imagination or my motives for passing on the news. 'Phenomenologically' there's no detour through my visual imagination (not, I mean, in my semantic intentions.) The meaning of the assertion is worldly, directly revealing our shared situation. A rational reconstruction might include your motives, what you pictured, but this would be semantically secondary, in my view.

Topic slide again.

Truth is not belief - already covered:

Truth is a unary. T(p) is a general representation of the statements, propositions, sentences, facts, or whatever you will, that we cast as true: "p is true"

Belief is binary. B(x,p) is a general representation of the statements, propositions, sentences, facts, or whatever you will, p, that we cast as being believed by x. "x holds that p is true" — Banno

Further, one chooses between a realist and an antirealist grammar. The best grammar for cats and mats is realist.

But any truth has relevance only insofar as it could be seen to be true, or stipulated to be true in a fiction. — Janus

I think you are correct.

But I also think that truth plays a role in a structure. Mostly we care about belief, and 'true' seems like a tool for talking about beliefs, perhaps in imagining them as certain, for instance. As Brandom might put it, we've invented words that allow us to talk about our thinking. Humans become self-consciously logical through inventing concepts like inference and truth...which 'only' made explicit what they are already in fact doing.

You are now creating further issues by drawing a distinction between a truth bearer without meaning (i.e. string-of-words) and a truth bearer with meaning.
— Luke

It's just the use/mention distinction. — Pie

Okay, but it’s not part of my argument (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/730759) at all. I assume that truth bearers are meaningful already. The distinction I am making, and the one I see you and the deflationists as collapsing, is between meaningful truth bearers and the world; between “snow is white” and the colour of actual snow.

If I tell you that there are plums in the icebox, I'm talking about those plums in that icebox. 'Phenomenologically' there's no detour through my imagination. The meaning of the assertion is worldly, directly revealing our shared situation. A rational reconstruction might include your motives, what you pictured, but this would be semantically secondary, in my view. — Pie

If you know there are plums in the icebox then you've seen them, and in telling me about them when the icebox is closed, you are remembering them being there, which amounts to imagining them. Unless I am there to witness the icebox you are referring to, or have seen it before and can thereby imagine it specifically, then I will only have a generalized picture of an icebox with plums in it.

Topic slide again. — Banno

Means nothing to me; just sounds vaguely like an insult.

Further, one chooses between a realist and an antirealist grammar. The best grammar for cats and mats is realist. — Banno

As far as I can tell all our "grammar" is realist. If we talk about cats on the mat, or plums in the icebox, we are talking about real cats, mats, plums and iceboxes if we are talking about things actually experienced or having the potential to be actually experienced.

But I also think that truth plays a role in a structure. Mostly we care about belief, and 'true' seems like a tool for talking about beliefs, perhaps in imagining them as certain, for instance. As Brandom might put it, we've invented words that allow us to talk about our thinking. Humans become self-consciously logical through inventing concepts like inference and truth...which 'only' made explicit what they are already in fact doing. — Pie

I agree. Belief is one thing, actuality another; which means our beliefs can be wrong. My point is only that our being wrong is irrelevant if there is no possibility of seeing that we were wrong. I think you are trying to point to the ( more general) significance of the possibility that we can be wrong, even when we have no possibility of seeing that we are wrong, and I acknowledge that general fact is important, to be sure, and it is what underpins the logic of our understanding of truth and meaning; which, as I've said, in my view is basically a logic of correspondence between saying and seeing (and being, with the caveat that in specific instances being is irrelevant if it, or at least its effects, cannot be seen).