• bongo fury
    1.6k
    Meh... Why would propositions be timeless?Olivier5

    You said

    Is truth a property of sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other), or is truth a property of propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and timeless entities)?
    — Pie

    Both, because propositions are in fact a class of sentences.
    Olivier5
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    I dispute the point that propositions are nonlinguistic and timeless entities. To my mind, they are just a certain type of sentences.
  • bongo fury
    1.6k
    Glad to hear it.

    Then why say "both"?
  • bongo fury
    1.6k
    My point was that you need to look for how an author is using the t-sentence rule. Use varies.Tate

    I was asking how you were trying to use it. Whether

    the disquoted partTate

    referred to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3.
  • Tate
    1.4k
    I was asking how you were trying to use it. Whether

    the disquoted part
    — Tate

    refers to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3.
    bongo fury

    I wasn't trying to use it. I took Banno to be asking if we should interpret the quotes as signaling a specific act of assertion. My answer was that you can do that, you just need to explain that to the reader.
  • Pie
    1k
    Both, because propositions are in fact a class of sentences.Olivier5

    Or perhaps neither ? We deny that truth is a property. "P is true" is a fancy/emphatic version of "P."
  • Tate
    1.4k
    We deny that truth is a property.Pie

    Deflationists don't deny that truth is a property, btw.
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    Then why say "both"?bongo fury

    I meant that if propositions are sentences, then truth is a property of propositions, and hence a property of certain sentences.
  • Pie
    1k
    I dispute the point that propositions are nonlinguistic and timeless entities.Olivier5

    :up:

    We should perhaps acknowledge a Derridean 'iterabilty' at work, which is what suggests 'timeless' to earlier theorist (there's a certain time-independence, since old books remain legible, we can quote Tarski in a new context,...)

    ‘Iterability’ explains that Derrida is concerned with the logical possibility — not merely the physical opportunity — for a written text to remain readable when the absence of the sender or the addressee is no longer a mode of presence but a radical or absolute absence. He sees the possibility of it functioning again beyond (or in the absence of) the ‘living present’ of its context of production or its empirically determined destination as part of what it is to be a written mark. We can thus propose this ‘law of writing’: a mark not structurally readable — iterable — beyond the death of the empirically determinable producer and receiver would not be writing.
    https://academic.oup.com/book/377/chapter-abstract/135193384?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    We deny that truth is a property.Pie

    We being?
  • Pie
    1k

    You may be right, but I don't think I'm that wrong.

    Philosophers looking for some underlying nature of some truth property that is attributed with the use of the expression ‘true’ are bound to be frustrated, the deflationist says, because they are looking for something that isn’t there.
    ...
    The suggestion that there is no truth property at all is advanced by some philosophers in the deflationary camp; we will look at some examples below. What makes this position difficult to sustain is that ‘is true’ is grammatically speaking a predicate much like ‘is metal’. If one assumes that grammatical predicates such as ‘is metal’ express properties, then, prima facie, the same would seem to go for ‘is true.’ This point is not decisive, however. For one thing, it might be possible to distinguish the grammatical form of claims containing ‘is true’ from their logical form; at the level of logical form, it might be, as prosententialists maintain, that ‘is true’ is not a predicate.
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    a certain time-independencePie

    Like a piece of wood can have a certain permanence and durability, a sentence can remain known and meaningful over time. But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time". They are just durable, for a while.
  • Pie
    1k
    But a sentence is already a class: of tokens, or copies. So you don't need another name for the more inclusive class.bongo fury

    :up:

    The Rust language dereferences pointers automatically. I think we humans are pretty good at doing that too.
  • bongo fury
    1.6k


    I definitely need that explained.

    I just meant that we can still drop "proposition".
  • Pie
    1k
    I definitely need that explained.bongo fury
    This is pretty good.
    In computer science, a pointer is an object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer references a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as dereferencing the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page.

    Quoting/mentioning is something like pointing at sentence-as-meant. Deferencing is like quote-stripping, 'activating' the code.

    I just meant that we can still drop "proposition".bongo fury

    :up:

    I probably just muddied the water by mentioning pointers.
  • Pie
    1k
    Like a piece of wood can have a certain permanence and durability, a sentence can remain known and meaningful over time. But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time". They are just durable, for a while.Olivier5

    :up:

    I agree. They seem to have meaning only as long as there are normative creatures with a use for them...as code as opposed to burning books to stay warm.
  • Pie
    1k
    But neither the wood nor the sentence are "out of time".Olivier5

    Turing machines have a 'potentially infinite' tape. This just means that we don't build in any limits. I think there is a similar open-ended-ness in play.
  • Pie
    1k
    We being?Olivier5

    I can't remember the context. Presumably it's 'we especially rational and charming people who agree with @Pie'...
  • bongo fury
    1.6k
    I think we humans are pretty good at doing that too.Pie

    Let's see...

    I wasn't trying to use it. I took Banno to be asking if we should interpret the quotes as signaling a specific act of assertion. My answer was that you can do that, you just need to explain that to the reader.Tate

    Ok so you were talking mainly about the first half of the biconditional. Even so, did

    the disquoted partTate

    refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?
  • Pie
    1k

    Maybe not then.
  • Tate
    1.4k
    refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?bongo fury

    You have to specify the context in which you're using the T-sentence rule. Is it Tarski? Redundancy? Are you try to make into correspondence theory?

    The answer to your question will vary depending on how you answer that.
  • bongo fury
    1.6k
    You have to specify the context in which you're using the T-sentence rule. Is it Tarski? Redundancy? Are you try to make into correspondence theory?Tate

    Er,

    If you're interpreting the t-sentence rule as a rendering of correspondence theory, thenTate

    Now then, in that context, your context, did

    the disquoted partTate

    refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    Presumably it's 'we especially rational and charming people who agree with Pie'...Pie

    So it was a regal we, fair enough.

    I personally see truth as a property of certain sentences and other symbolic representations of reality, the property of having a good enough fit with said reality, as far as we can tell.
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    there is a similar open-ended-ness in play.Pie

    The same applies to many objects, including material ones.
  • Pie
    1k
    I personally see truth as a property of certain sentences and other symbolic representations of reality, the property of having a good enough fit with said reality, as far as we can tell.Olivier5

    That view is tempting, but I can't make sense of the comparison, of the fit. Only one side is intelligible.

    We clearly aren't fitting strings of letter to reality but the 'meaning' of the utterance. Yet the 'meaning' is just the more or less tentatively embraced 'structure of reality.' It's as if world-as-speakable and language are one, but that's a tautology...(?)

    How do you make sense of fit ? Do you see a problem ?
  • Pie
    1k
    The same applies to many objects, including material ones.Olivier5

    :up:
  • Tate
    1.4k
    refer to the sentence constituting the second part of the biconditional or to some corresponding event or relation, or something else, or all 3 (because it doesn't matter)?bongo fury

    It would be some state of the world.
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    Yet the 'meaning' is just the more or less tentatively embraced 'structure of reality.'Pie

    The meaning of a proposition remains a representation of reality, at least an attempt at it. It's not the reality it tries to depict. It is true to the extent that it represents perceivable reality in an accurate manner.
  • bongo fury
    1.6k
    It would be some state of the world.Tate

    What would? What you're calling "the disquoted part"?

    Some state of the world is a disquoted part? Part of what? Part of the world?

    So "part" didn't mean "part of the T schema"?
  • Pie
    1k
    The meaning of a proposition remains a representation of reality, at least an attempt at it. It's not the reality it tries to depict.Olivier5

    My question is: how does (the meaning of ) a true statement depict reality ? What is this representational, optical metaphor doing or trying to do ?
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