But "liquorice is tasty" isn't true, or at least, it is neither true nor false.

I'd agree that it isn't true, but only because I don't like liquorice (and so it isn't true for me). I don't know why you'd think it not truth-apt. It's as truth-apt as any other meaningful proposition, I'd say.

'Spose it depends whether or not you think taste is an inherently relational category. That is, to be tasty is by definition to be tasty for-someone. If so, to treat taste as an 'in-itself' would constitute a grammatical error.

By definition? I don't know if it being a relational category is known a priori. Isn't it an a posteriori determination? I'd say that it falls into the same category as being red, and I neither think that "the car is red" isn't truth-apt nor that such a proposition is objectively true.

But surely that the car is red is true for everybody (even colour blind people! They just don't see it as red).

This could get messy now.

I'd argue that being red is not much different to being tasty. It's a relational category. The difference is that one is a product of us interacting with chemicals and the other is a product of us interacting with light.

But, yes, this could get us sidetracked into arguing over the nature of perception, which I don't have the stamina for at the moment. ;)

Are there different sorts of truth? Is "objective truth" meaningful? — Mongrel

The problem is that it's not objective. It's subjective.

I don't know what it could mean to say that truth is objective. The idea of truth seems to be the idea of something really being the case; the idea of an objective state of affairs or actuality. So, truth is the idea of the objective, it is of the objective, but is not itself objective, it is of actuality, but is not itself actual. — John

Standardly in analytic philosophy, truth is a property of propositions. And namely, it's a relation between a proposition and something else. The something else depends on the truth theory in question. If one uses correspondence, the something else is states of affairs aka facts. If one uses coherence, the something else is one's other propositions accepted as true. if one uses consensus, the something else is communal agreement. Etc.

Thinking more about this. If reason/rationality is a necessary part of "the bones" of what it takes to make a good, charitable, say objective interpretation, I don't think that entails that the perspective itself needs to be rational, good or charitable since I think all perspectives are normative and norms are not necessarily rational, good or charitable. Interpretation is methodological, not epistemic (perhaps). — Cavacava

I agree. I don't think "objective" means good or charitable.

It was a dark and stormy night.

This, coming without quotes at the beginning of a story, is an expression of objectivity. The narrator seems to see the whole world as if from floating on high. An image that comes to mind is a map. A map is the world with an x-y axis laid over it. The mind rambles through this artificial landscape in a way flesh and blood can't. At the moment true statements made from this vantage point are identified as the standard of reality.... a little Nietzsche has entered the scene. A metaphor has been presented as Truth, and somehow that switcheroo is escaping awareness.

So perhaps truth is one, but that can't be proven on the basis of multiple perspectives, since while translations between perspectives, may possible, they do may not necessarily convey with the same meaning, since they are interpreted using different presuppositions. — Cavacava

My thoughts about this are a little like a cat round-up because of an issue having to do with Slavic languages and Homeric Greek. In both cases, there something that comes into relief when a comparison is made to a contemporary western outlook. Sort of like... what we call the psyche is turned inside out. The concept of motive is backward. The world animates the individual. The world is responsible and the protagonist is a marshmallow in a stream.

I'm not sure if a story told in one mode is translatable into the other, exactly. Maybe the reader never is neutral. Translation is actually a matter of metamorphosis of the reader, not the content. To understand you is to become you.

I don't know if there was any confusion about the subjective/objective terms. I simply use them this way: "subjective" is something that occurs in or of a mind. "Objective" is the complement of that--so something that occurs extramentally/outside of minds. Or in other words, I use them as location terms.

But I regard objective truth as pertaining to statements that are made regarding empirical objects and forces. In other words, an objective statement ought to be corroborated with reference to the measurement of something existent. Whereas mathematical proofs are not objective in that sense, even though to all intents they are regarded as objective statements. — Wayfarer

One thing that I think causes confusion in these discussions is differing interpretations re whether the term "objective" in "objective truth" or "objective statement" refers to what the statement is about, or is instead a (putative) property of a truth or a statement itself.

It seems like you're using "objective" to refer to what a statement is about. When I say "there is no objective truth," I'm using "objective" to refer to properties of truth itself.

Agree with John that truth is just "what is the case". In my opinion, objectivity has to do with justification, and not with truth per se. — Aaron R

"What is the case" would normally be another way of saying "fact" or "state of affairs." The reason that analytic philosophy stressed that "truth" is different than "what is the case" is that if we say that "truth" is "what is the case," that would suggest that "falsehood" is "what isn't the case." But what sort of existence does "what isn't the case" have? None. So there are no falsehoods? That's not right, is it?

Thus truth is parsed as a property of propositions, as is falsehood. Truth and falsehood are a relational property between propositions and something else (again, like facts in the case of correspondence theory).

One wonders what kind of conceptual work the qualifier 'objective' in 'objective truth' does. — StreetlightX

It claims a property that's a category error in this case. ;-)

(If you're wondering "what property," the answer to that is "mind-independence.")

There are formal accounts of subjective truth being developed by Peter Lasersohn, John MacFarlane, Mark Richard, and Max Kölbel out there. I think they're mistaken, but the idea has gained some traction. It seems to me that 'Licorice is tasty' is truth-apt in the ordinary way, and that the idea of 'truth for someone' can't be made sense of (unless '"Licorice is tasty" is true for me' just means 'It's true that licorice is tasty to me').

the idea of 'truth for someone' can't be made sense of — The Great Whatever

Well, my idea, at any rate, is that the relation between a proposition and facts, say (if we're using correspondence, and I do) is something that requires a mind to make a judgment about. What doesn't make any sense to me is supposing that the relation can somehow obtain mind-independently.

"What is the case" would normally be another way of saying "fact" or "state of affairs." — Terrapin

There's an ambiguity here that needs to be clarified. "What is the case" here refers to the form of truth as a concept or an idea governing discursive practice, not as some specific content or "thing" in the world.

Okay, but then there's a problem with the idea of natural language somehow being either the same or at least mappable to facts aside from judgments that we make about that relationship.

Is "I find liquorice tastes good", given that is true, an objective or a subjective truth?

Would it be publicly verifiable?

Edit: subsequently reading back over the thread I see the first question, or similar questions, had already been somewhat addressed.

There are no objective truths in my view.

The distinction doesn't have anything to do with whether something is publicly verifiable. It has to do with location--where truths obtain.

Okay, but then there's a problem with the idea of natural language somehow being either the same or at least mappable to facts aside from judgments that we make about that relationship — Terrapin

Right, so that's where you have guys like McDowell, Brandom and Haugeland arguing that the world itself is "in conceptual shape". I think it was McDowell who said "there is no 'outside' the concept", or something to that effect. See also the notion of "pansemiosis" that has become in-vogue among some of Peirce's successors in contemporary semiotic theory. The story being told in both cases goes something like this: there's no problem of how thought maps to the world because the structure of the world matches the structure of thought.

Yes, the very notion that the world could somehow not be conceptually articulated is, when you look at it closely, utterly unintelligible.

The story being told in both cases goes something like this: there's no problem of how thought maps to the world because the structure of the world matches the structure of thought. — Aaron R

If they're not focusing on people mentally judging the relation, that would require some sort of mapping or comparison mechanism, too.

But more importantly than that, what are they taking to be evidence that "the structure of the world" in general matches "the structure of thought"?

Obviously "the structure of thought" would match "the structure of the world" insofar as we're talking about that part of the world that consists of thought--since they're identical in that case, but re the world outside of thought, what's the evidence or argument for that?

See also the notion of "pansemiosis" that has become in-vogue among some of Peirce's successors in contemporary semiotic theory. The story being told in both cases goes something like this: there's no problem of how thought maps to the world because the structure of the world matches the structure of thought. — Aaron R

I think pansemiosis has to be more subtle than that. It says instead that the structure of thought and the structure of the world both share the deeper structure that is the structure of semiosis, or the sign relation.

So in practice, existence is still divided into thinking creatures and thoughtless world (by the epistemic cut of a modelling relation). Otherwise pansemiosis starts to become indistinguishable from panpsychism.

I think pansemiosis has to be more subtle than that. It says instead that the structure of thought and the structure of the world both share the deeper structure that is the structure of semiosis, or the sign relation. — apokrisis

I wonder where the heck that "deeper structure of semiosis" is supposed to be located in that case.

So in practice, existence is still divided into thinking creatures and thoughtless world — apokrisis

Right, but the "thoughtless world", although it doesn't 'possess thoughts' is always already in the form of thought. To put it another way, 'anything' that is not in the form of thought is as nothing.

the "thoughtless world", although it doesn't 'possess thoughts' is always already in the form of thought. — John

What would that even mean.

Just what is the "form of thought" first off? We'd need to know that to know whether it's the case that the world is always already in the form of thought.

I wonder where the heck that "deeper structure of semiosis" is supposed to be located in that case. — Terrapin Station

Perhaps it would be more fruitful to wonder where the deeper structure is exhibited? (The answer being in both the world and the mind.)

Well, is it just identical to the world and the mind? In that case, calling it a "deeper structure" doesn't make much sense.

Right, but the "thoughtless world", although it doesn't 'possess thoughts' is always already in the form of thought. To put it another way, 'anything' that is not in the form of thought is as nothing. — John

The use of psychological terminology here is to risk blurring pansemiosis with panpsychism. So it has to be done carefully.

But I would point out that thought for humans is both thoughtful (that is articulate and attentional) and thoughtless (that is automatic or habitual).

So you could say - as Peirce did - that the world is inveterate habit. It has the character of thought turned thoughtless and completely fixed in its ways.

So there is a common form in play - the triadic structure of a sign relation. But even in ourselves. there is a sharp contrast between the freshly thought, the creatively free thought, and the thoughts which have long fossilised into stable pragmatic habits, the reactions or relations "we" no longer have to think about, and so which in fact now constitute us psychologicallly as this "we".

Applying this to the Universe, you can say then that all its spontaneity has been pretty much spend. There is only a Planck scale uncertainty that remains at base. The Universe is not thinking actively anymore. It has no "we" separate from the inveterate physical habits which pretty much completely constitute it now.

Again, this is all a very psychological kind of description of the metaphysics. Pansemiosis as a putative scientific project would want to tie in with physical science more than psychological science (while also insisting that the two are structurally "the same").

And this is what looks to be happening because fundamental physics has taken its decisive turn towards an information theoretic and thermodynamic formulation. What could be more perfectly poised as a balancing of the mental and the physical than to render a description of reality in terms of "information"?

Information means both at the same time the quantification of mental uncertainty and material certainty. It measures both sides of the equation the same way, and allows their exact conversion.

This is why pansemiosis is now something worth talking about. Physics is already there (even if it wouldn't describe itself in those terms just yet).

apokrisis, when you start waxing poetic I often wish you'd provide references to companion literature, as I typically can't figure out what the frick you're saying, exactly, but it sounds like it might be interesting presented by someone who can write in a style more consistent with my dispositions.

Well, is it just identical to the world and the mind? In that case, calling it a "deeper structure" doesn't make much sense. — Terrapin Station

You are trying to fit things into a view of existence that lacks spatiotemporal scale. You are imagining reality as an atomistic state of affairs in which "everything that is" is crammed into the one place at the one time. You are adopting a synchronic or present tense view of existence when its reality is integrated across a hierarchy of "cogent moments" or spatiotemporal scales.

This is a really fundamental ontological difference here. And until you can understand what it would mean to take a holistic point of view on the issue, you are just going to keep talking past any post I might make.