All else is sophistry. — Banno

Or worse still, semantics! :wink:

You propose that if we let the beast semantics on our land at all, we shackle it with the T-schema? Allow, if we must, theoretical talk of linguistic entities and their semantic relations with cats and mats, but be prepared to exchange it for talk about only the cats and mats, as in proper science?

Fine if so, but mustn't you then stay out of arguments about kinds of assertion and belief, and how we learn to recognise them?

Ready to hear why not.

↪Banno I get that metaphysics is different from epistemology, but epistemology relies upon metaphysics because the T in the JTB is a direct link to what is. — Hanover

Yes and that is the rub. Metaphysics is beyond epistemology and hence is beyond knowledge which means it is indistinguishable from fantasy. The T of JTB is cannot be directly linked to 'what is' , it is based on naïve reality, in other words it is a fantasy. All one knows is what can be derived from epistemology.

We collectively never assert a proposition which is false, how could we? — Isaac

'Twas once commonly asserted that the sun is the centre of the cosmos.

I'm only asking how you would justify such a theory of truth. — Isaac

Well... it's simpler than any other? I don't see any substance in your reply.

Or it's just you enjoy evasiveness and get some rise out of not being open to actual discussion because you think your position so obvious and correct that it's beneath you to have to explain it. That's at least as it seems. — Hanover

Pretty much.

Two distinct questions: what is truth? What do we know?

The answer to the first question: "p" is true IFF p. And that is all there is to say on it, apart from some psychological footnotes on performatives.

The answer to the second question: we know all sorts of different things, from how to ride bikes thru how to multiply numbers to where you left your keys.

The supposed bit in between, the philosophical musings about justified true beliefs, is a philosophical quagmire, a bottle trap for blow flies.

SO I've provided the answer to "when is it true that the cat is on the mat". You are now asking the quite different question: how do I know that the cat is on the mat? And the answer to that question is multifarious and subject to change. Because I can see him; because WIfe told me so; because he was there when last I looked.

I'm afraid that your question is far too clever to be understood.

Is it much ado about nothing?

Ha ha, probably :joke:

Yes and that is the rub. Metaphysics is beyond epistemology and hence is beyond knowledge which means it is indistinguishable from fantasy. The T of JTB is cannot be directly linked to 'what is' , it is based on naïve reality, in other words it is a fantasy. All one knows is what can be derived from epistemology. — A Seagull

Here's a fine fly-bottle. A Seagull who writes eloquently, yet without knowing.

I put it to you that you know plenty of cool stuff, but philosophy tells you otherwise. Drop the philosophy.

Twas once commonly asserted that the sun is the centre of the cosmos. — Banno

Yes, but not by us, nit by the ones for whom "the sun is the centre of the cosmos" is false. We would never say that (and mean it), and it is us for whom it is false (now or then).

Well... it's simpler than any other? I don't see any substance in your reply. — Banno

"The cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat, right? That remains contingent, we can't say if the statement "the cat is on the mat" is true or not, only the circumstances under which it is true - the cat is on the mat. "A" is true IFF A.

So now take your statement "" the cat is on the mat" is true IFF the cat is on the mat". That statement (the whole thing in the quotation marks, with another statement referenced inside it), we'll call it "B". At the moment, it's not actually the case, it's only contingent. It's contingent on B - "the cat is on the mat" is true IFF the cat is on the mat.

So all you've offered is something which could be the case. I'm asking how we establish if it is.

With "the cat is on the mat" we just look at the mat and see if there's a cat on it. What do we do with your statement B to see if it is, in fact, the case?

The JTB account is described as so much farting, in the last few lines of the Theaetetus account from whence it came.

I think it better to treat knowledge as a family resemblance word; what we know must be true, must be believed; but what is to count as a justification cannot be set out in an algorithm. Hence no general account of knowledge can be complete.

Which should not be a surprise. One cannot know everything.

Yes, but not by us, nit by the ones for whom "the sun is the centre of the cosmos" is false. We would never say that (and mean it), and it is us for whom it is false (now or then). — Isaac

IT was false for them, too. They were what We In The Trade call wrong.

I'm asking how we establish if it is. — Isaac

Two distinct questions: what is truth? What do we know?

The answer to the first question: "p" is true IFF p. And that is all there is to say on it, apart from some psychological footnotes on performatives.

The answer to the second question: we know all sorts of different things, from how to ride bikes thru how to multiply numbers to where you left your keys.

The supposed bit in between, the philosophical musings about justified true beliefs, is a philosophical quagmire, a bottle trap for blow flies.

SO I've provided the answer to "when is it true that the cat is on the mat". You are now asking the quite different question: how do I know that the cat is on the mat? And the answer to that question is multifarious and subject to change. Because I can see him; because WIfe told me so; because he was there when last I looked. — Banno

All I'm doing here is pointing out that "how de we know that the cat is on the mat?" and "How do we know that 'the cat is on the mat' is true?" are pretty much the same question.

Here's a fine fly-bottle. A Seagull who writes eloquently, yet without knowing.

I put it to you that you know plenty of cool stuff, but philosophy tells you otherwise. Drop the philosophy. — Banno

I suspect that if you knew a little bit more about philosophy you would realise how little you actually know.

Doubtless; I have honours and a masters, and have been studying philosophy for over forty years.

But I could lean some more.

So, educate me.

IT was false for them, too. They were what We In The Trade call wrong. — Banno

We would say it was false for them, they wouldn't. Its what "we in the trade" call wrong, not what "they at the time" call wrong. Note, I'm not going for relativism here, I'm a solid redundancy theorist (Ramsey variety) when it comes to truth. I'm just interested in the epistemic implications. You can't have your cake and eat it here. If the statement "the cat is on the mat" is only contingently 'true' (upon whether the cat is indeed on the mat) then the statement ""A" is true IFF A" is itself only contingently true (upon it being the case that "A" is true if A). You've only done half the job of making your case.

So the second half shows your statement to actually be true (not just true IFF). It's the looking for the cat. Ramsey would say "the cat is on the mat" is true if when we look at the mat we see the cat there. The addition of the behaviour consistent with the state of affairs is important because it encompasses what we're doing with the term 'true'. It's why the Tarskian version alone is unsatisfying.

...then the statement ""A" is true IFF A" is itself only contingently true (upon it being the case that "A" is true if A). — Isaac

Dude, help me here....

"A" is true IFF A" is equivalent to it being the case that "A" is true IFF A"...

So we have "A" is true IFF A" iff "A" is true IFF A"

which is a tautology; and hence not contingent.

What have I missed?

Ramsey would say "the cat is on the mat" is true if when we look at the mat we see the cat there. — Isaac

Sure - Ramsey has one demonstrate one's understanding of "the cat is on the mat" by making use of it.

That's not an objection to what I have said.

I'm at a loss to understand where it is you think we disagree.

↪A Seagull Doubtless; I have honours and a masters, and have been studying philosophy for over forty years.

But I could lean some more.

So, educate me. — Banno

I am not here to educate people.

I would only say that there is a distinct distinction between history of philosophy, which is the main focus of universities, and philosophy itself. The distinction is similar to that of actually climbing mountains and reading accounts of people who have climbed mountains.

Philosophy is necessarily based upon assumptions, a good philosophy will identify those assumptions, a poor one will just leave them as implicit.

What assumptions does your philosophy make?

What assumptions does your philosophy make? — A Seagull

All of them.

lol

Including:
Fantasies are real?
Logic of language is irrefutable?
Everything Kant wrote is true?
Philosophy as taught at universities is true?
People are born into sin?
Life is a misery?

Or perhaps it is the lack of competent foreplay. — Banno

Touché (inadéquat ou inepte?).

So we have "A" is true IFF A" iff "A" is true IFF A" — Banno

You're missing the quotations marks (the issue which I stated with. I probably should be putting this in some sort of notation which will make it clearer, but I don't know how to use it so I'll just end up making matter's worse. I'll try one more time with.

1. "The cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat. -> "A" (in quotation marks) is true iff A (no quotation marks. That much is what you've stated, is that right?

2. The second A can be replaced with some justificatory action - procedure X - so "the cat is on the mat" is true iff procedure X produces the expected results (we go to pick up the cat and it is indeed there)

3. The problem with this as a truth theory is that procedure X is not the same for all propositions. It's a 'family resemblance' type collection of procedures. The procedure for verifying that the cat is on the mat might be to look, ask someone, feel for it etc.

4. Ramsey gets round this by unifying all types of procedure, adding a pinch of watered-down Cambridge Pragmatism, by saying they'll all some version of 'act as if A was true, and if everything works, then A is true' - Ramsey avoids 'true', he uses 'is the case'.

5. Now you have a proposition which you'd like us to consider is the case - that proposition is that {""the cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat"}. The whole proposition is the one contained in the curly braces, I've put quotation marks around the whole thing (they're double at the beginning because the proposition starts with reference to another proposition). We'll call your proposition B (the whole thing - all that is contained in the curly braces. "B" is true iff B, right?

6. So you've given us the conditions under which your proposition would be the case - {""the cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat"} would itself, as a whole proposition, be true iff were the case that "the cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat.

7. Now, recall the collection of acceptable verification procedures to establish if the cat was indeed on the mat - look, ask someone, feel for it etc.

8. Now replace 'the cat is on the mat' in all propositions above with 'the earth is flat' and work backwards, imagining you're 1000 years ago

First we verify if the earth is indeed flat - we look, we ask others, we feel it - yep the earth is indeed flat. Then we check your second proposition - the one about when a proposition is true. It says that {""the earth is flat" is true iff the earth is flat"}. Now we can check that too, against language use. Just like we checked the first proposition (about the shape of the earth). That too seems to be the case (1000 years ago) people are indeed using the word 'true' about the proposition "the earth is flat" in cases where (according to their verification procedures) the earth is flat. All good...

...Until you want to say those people were wrong. What they said was untrue. They didn't do the verification procedure as well as we can now, they made a mistake. Fine. But what about your proposition (the one about when propositions are true). Well, our 1000 year old scholar doesn't seem to have made any error there. People were indeed using the word 'true' about the proposition "the earth is flat" on the basis that their verification procedures showed the earth to be flat. After all, your proposition was not {""the cat is on the mat is true iff (all verification procedures ever invented show that) the cat is on the mat"}.

But when you say they were wrong, "it not only isn't true, but it wasn't 'true' that the earth is flat", you're missing a verification procedure for proposition (the equivalent of checking to see if the cat is on the mat), because if we use the procedure [check to see if people are using the word 'true' about "the earth is flat" iff the earth is flat], then we get a sound "No". If we ignore their verification procedures, but use ours instead, then people are using the word 'true' about the proposition "the earth is flat" in cases when the earth isn't flat. So what now? Were they all using the word wrongly? Are we saying the entire community of language users 1000 years ago did not know the meaning of the word 'true'?

The second A can be replaced with some justificatory action - procedure X - so "the cat is on the mat" is true iff procedure X produces the expected results (we go to pick up the cat and it is indeed there) — Isaac

But that's not right.

At the best you could claim a procedure was needed to justify belief in A.

But the error here has you replacing redundancy with verification, and hence heading off down some garden path.

It seems to me that very few people have a serious vested interest in critically studying or examining such a thing to begin with, as opposed to mindlessly regurgitating media propaganda marketed to the 6th grade reading level, in the worst cases outright known that it is nonsense or contradictory and simply not caring, in many cases merely using outdated and archaic "system 1" thinking, as documented by experts such as Philip Tetlock to filter out the truth or inconventient details, not because it is "true" in any ultimate or axiomatic sense, but simply because it is "convenient" and provides a means of structure or consistenty to life, in regards to what to filter in and what to filter out, without ever bother to second guess or double check whether or not the axiom or judgment was ever or even 'correct' to begin with.

I am not here to educate people. — A Seagull

Probably just as well.

Right. We're probably approaching this problem differently then. I'm quite a strong "meaning is use" person. I gathered from some of your previous posts that you were too - but that may have just been an poor summary.

To me, if someone asks "what is truth?" the only coherent answer to that is the answer to "what do we use the word 'truth' for, what circumstances is it useful in?"

So "the cat is in the mat is 'true' IFF...?" just means "what circumstances do people say, of "the cat is on the mat", that it is true, and what are they trying to get done by using the word.

In the case of 'true' those circumstances always involve verification of some sort.

Person A "The cat is on the roof"- Person B goes out to check.
Person B "the cat is on the roof, it's true"

Person A "is it true, today's your birthday?"
Person B (checks his calendar and personal memory) "yes"

Person A "is all the evidence given here true?"
Person B (checks, corroborates, asks experts) "yes , all the evidence given here is true"

etc...

You trying to claim that what is 'true' (even for the people at the time) is what we currently think is the case is just not how 'true' is used. If you're not defining 'true' by how it is used, then I'm not interested in going any further because I don't hold with trying to define what things should mean, only what they do mean.

Play with it a bit, and you may find that T-sentences exactly capture what you are saying here.

Play with it a bit, and you may find that T-sentences exactly capture what you are saying here. — Banno

OK. I have had a look at T-sentence stuff before and couldn't make the jump from formal languages to real languages, but I'm prepared give it another try, I've got a few papers on Tarski, I'll give them another look through and see if I can see what you're seeing.

If the existence of a verification procedure or justification for a statement was necessary for a statement's truth, "There are dinosaurs" would be false before the advent of humanity because there would be no verification procedures or justifications.

If a particular verification procedure or justification was sufficient for a statement's truth, then in order to avoid true falsehoods and false truths, this verification procedure or justification must be infallible; as in this model, X being verified or justified forces "X" is true.

So long as justification and verification are fallible, and there are truths prior to the advent of humanity, justification and verification are logically independent (in the sense of not formally entailing anything about) of statement truth value.

If belief in a statement was necessary for a statement's truth, then "There are dinosaurs" would be false before the advent of humanity because there would be no beliefs in statements (since it is not believed, and belief is necessary for truth, then it is false).

If belief in a statement was sufficient for a statement's truth, then in order to avoid true falsehoods or false truths, this belief must be infallible; as in this model, X being believed forces "X" is true.

So long as belief is fallible, and there are no beliefs in statements prior to the advent of humanity, belief in statements and their truth are logically independent.

What we can say is true is not what is true! Though what we say is true is largely what seems true to us or what can be asserted with adequate justification.

Are there still relationships between justifications/verifications procedures, beliefs and truths? Ideally, a justification or verification procedure connects a truth evidentially and conceptually to a belief. An inquiry may cause us to question, reevaluate and re-contextualise held beliefs to better connect our beliefs to the truth and to dispel false statements and connections.

Epistemology (of statements/declarative knowledge) dwells in the rupture between belief and truth, trying to analyse the bridges we build between them.

the existence of a verification procedure or justification for a statement was necessary for a statement's truth, "There are dinosaurs" would be false before the advent of humanity because there would be no verification procedures or justifications. — fdrake

We tend to assume that there were no utterances prior to the advent of humanity, so no "P"'s.

Or we could look at propositions as eternal content distinct from utterances, which is how most people think of it (if they do think if it), but that seems too Platonic to some.