The cup is on the table. Someone says "the cup is on the table". Person A...

Squirming...

humans must work together and agree on some things in order to make a society work. Common values is important to some extent. — christian2017

Some humans already agree on some things. What about those who don't agree, what should we do in your opinion? Force them to change their mind? Lock them up? That's not the dream society I have in mind. That's a society ripe for totalitarianism, tyranny. Sure, tyranny seems fine when you're the tyrant.

I’m afraid, or troubled anyway, by you lot; because I think you’re motivated in your belief by a desire to avoid right and wrong. — AJJ

Speaking for myself, that's not the desire motivating me. I'm rather motivated by the desire to combat those who carry out and justify the worse atrocities in the name of objective truth, while it's only their truth, they pretext they're doing it in the name of some higher principle and so they aren't responsible, supposedly the culprit is not them it's something outside of them, but they are responsible. Impose your truth onto others, silence all who disagree, and your truth becomes objective truth, something that people must not and cannot question. Then kids grow up into a world where they are made to accept the truths of tyrants.

You are responsible for how you treat others, regardless of whether you call it right or wrong. Saying truth is personal is not a pretext to go around making others suffer, you create your truth doesn't mean something outside you is forcing you to create a truth where making others suffer is fine. You participate in shaping the world, you decide how you want to shape it. If you decide to shape it in a way that you enslave others and kill for fun, that says more about you than about those who don't think there is such a thing as objective truth, beyond a concept in the mind of those who want to impose their truth onto everyone else.

What I was saying was you can’t live consistently as if there’s no objective truth. You have to behave as if certain things are objectively true, such as that rat poison affects the body differently to aspirin. — AJJ

You can behave as if certain things are true to you, you don't have to behave as if they are true independently of you, because that leads you to want to impose it onto others. Let's say you think it is objective truth that aspirin is good to give to people who suffer, then you give it to someone and they suffer even more, well turns out that wasn't objective truth, back to the drawing board. That something works for you in some way doesn't mean it's gonna work the same way for everyone else. Or you've never had spiritual experiences and you think it is objective truth that spirituality is bullshit, some mass delusion, well that's your truth, not objective truth.

Some humans already agree on some things. What about those who don't agree, what should we do in your opinion? Force them to change their mind? Lock them up? That's not the dream society I have in mind. That's a society ripe for totalitarianism, tyranny. Sure, tyranny seems fine when you're the tyrant. — leo

I agree with what you said. These are all bad ways to deal with a problem. Certain types of extreme sexual perversion should be dealt with severely. I'm sure you would agree with that. Murder can't go unhindered, and i'm sure you would agree with that. Where is it you feel we are in disagreement?

The thing is you can oppose tyranny and believe in objective truth, and you can be tyrant who believes there is no objective truth; so I don’t buy your claimed motivation.

If it’s not objectively true rat poison harms people (barring some peculiar exceptions maybe), then there’d be no problem arbitrarily feeding it to children. Its harms might be true to you, but not to the parents feeding it to their kids. So there’s no problem with them doing that, right?

The cup is on the table. Someone says "the cup is on the table". Person A... — creativesoul

Sure. So why do you think I'd say they're both mistaken?

Perhaps you can answer this for me:

State of affairs (objective fact): the cat is on the mat
Proposition: “the cat is on the mat”

Person A judges the proposition true
Person B judges the proposition false

Who is correct (from our perspective)?
Person A, Person B, both, or neither

I use the "abbreviation," too, but we know that "the cat is on the mat" isn't literally the proposition, right?

I’m just going to reply to Mww here.

Cool. I'm going to comment on whatever strikes my fancy. ;-)

Perhaps you can answer this for me:

State of affairs (objective fact): the cat is on the mat
Proposition: “the cat is on the mat”

Person A judges the proposition true
Person B judges the proposition false

Who is correct (from our perspective)?
Person A, Person B, both, or neither — AJJ

I think I can answer this myself. The answer, as far as I’m concerned, is Person A. This is because the proposition “Person A is correct” matches the reality of person A being correct, since I’ve judged the example proposition to be true also. All of that is mind-dependent judgment. So the more pertinent question is this:

If the example proposition doesn’t correspond to the state of affairs unless I judge it to, on what basis am I making that judgment in the first place?

If the example proposition doesn’t correspond to the state of affairs unless I judge it to, on what basis am I making that judgment in the first place? — AJJ

I think I can answer this as well. You’re making it on the basis of whether the proposition relates properly to the state of affairs. That too is a judgement, which you’re making on the basis of what? Your answer to that will be a judgment also, so on what basis are you making that?

It seems, so long as you lock truth within the mind, you get an explanatory regress.

since I’ve judged the example proposition to be true also. All of that is mind-dependent judgment. — AJJ

You performed a mind-independent judgment? :brow:

You performed a mind-independent judgment? :brow: — Terrapin Station

Read it again you tendentious nitwit.

Yes, I misread that, because you were arguing that the relation can obtain mind-independently.

Guy calls me up, says....dude, guess what? The cat’s on the mat. What else could I say but....wonderful. Glad to hear it. There’s no way possible for me to grant the truth of the proposition, because I have no means to eliminate it’s negation. The most reductive judgement I’m allowed is granting that it is certainly possible the cat is indeed on the mat, because it is conceivable that he is, in turn because I have extant intuitions of cats and mats and no experience of them ever being mutually exclusive. Conversely, I am also not rightly allowed to judge that the cat is not on the mat.

This is why care needs be taken to understand just what is corresponding to what. The correspondence theory of truth says a proposition is true if it matches a state of affairs, but one still is absolutely required to know with apodeictic certainty what that state is, if he is to cognize a truth about it by means of a subject/object proposition. This is why logicians say P is true IFF it is the case P. If follows that the empirical condition must be antecedent to the proposition itself, anything else warrants merely a possible truth. And.....er......truth be told, the proposition actually presupposes the state of affairs to which it’s asked to correspond.
————————-

Addendum the first:

If the example proposition doesn’t correspond to the state of affairs unless I judge it to, on what basis am I making that judgment in the first place? — AJJ

Herein lay the problem with the correspondence theory of truth understood in this manner. If the proposition does not correspond to the state of affairs to which it is asked to assign a truth value, it’s because a judgement has been made by which the subject of the proposition does not belong to the predicate, state of affairs be what it may. One does not judge whether the proposition corresponds, but whether the subject and object correspond, or not, from which the truth is cognized, or not, with respect to a certain empirical condition. This is a lot easier to grasp if it be granted that any truth is thought long before it is ever put in propositional form, and the only reason to put any thought at all in propositional form is to communicate it.
———————-

Addendum the second:

It seems, so long as you lock truth within the mind, you get an explanatory regress. — AJJ

I would rather say, not so much an explanatory regress, but a tentative quality of knowledge, and by association, of truth itself. I shy away from explanatory regress because there are theoretical predicates for the human rational system, logically consistent and governed by the principles of universality and necessity. In other words, laws. But then, no matter what anybody says about it, somebody else can say something else, so.......so much for laws. That being said, experience informs us empirical knowledge is never static, even if pure a priori knowledge most certainly is.

I think we say we lock truth with the mind because that’s the only way we can, being the kind of agency we are. It’s why fundamental dualism is impossible to refute. And also why, even if we are not entitled to our own facts, we are sometimes entitled to our own truths.

I would rather say, not so much an explanatory regress, but a tentative quality of knowledge, and by association, of truth itself. I shy away from explanatory regress because there are theoretical predicates for the human rational system, logically consistent and governed by the principles of universality and necessity. In other words, laws. But then, no matter what anybody says about it, somebody else can say something else, so.......so much for laws. That being said, experience informs us empirical knowledge is never static, even if pure a priori knowledge most certainly is. — Mww

This strikes me as prevarication. I can’t see where it answers the problem of there being an explanatory regress, which in effect means there is no foundational reason for judging a proposition to be true.

You’re making it on the basis of whether the proposition relates properly to the state of affairs. That too is a judgement, which you’re making on the basis of what? — AJJ

The correspondence relation is a judgment made on the basis of what you have in mind with the proposition versus the facts from your perspective. The two components that you're checking against each other aren't judgments. They're rather the meaning(s) you assign and your perception (or apperception as the case might be, or even a stipulation in some cases).

There’s an obvious reply to this, but there’s no point making it if you can’t figure it out yourself.

......explanatory regress, which in effect means there is no foundational reason for judging a proposition to be true. — AJJ

I don’t see a prevarication, or equivocation. I don’t judge the proposition/state of affairs duality for its correspondence, but rather I judge the subject/predicate duality for its correspondence. In this view, there can’t be any explanatory regress; either intuition corresponds to conception by rule or it does not. End of story. Well......end of that story anyway.

Where do you see prevarication coming from? If by it you mean the occasion where one person cognizes a truth but another person does not, under the exact same conditions, I am reminded of......

“....For although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse. Deficiency in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labour under a  deficiency in the faculty of judgement, it is not uncommon to find men extremely learned who in the application of their science betray a lamentable degree this irremediable want....”

I think my objection still stands.

I understand you as saying a proposition is true when, in reality, its subject (the cat) corresponds to its predicate (on the mat). The way you judge this correspondence is by seeing if your conception (how you think of it) matches your intuition (what you perceive). But on what basis are you judging this to be the way you judge truth? Then, whatever your answer, on what basis are you judging that to be your reason? And so on.

The thing is you can oppose tyranny and believe in objective truth, and you can be tyrant who believes there is no objective truth; so I don’t buy your claimed motivation.

If it’s not objectively true rat poison harms people (barring some peculiar exceptions maybe), then there’d be no problem arbitrarily feeding it to children. Its harms might be true to you, but not to the parents feeding it to their kids. So there’s no problem with them doing that, right? — AJJ

I think it's harder to be a tyrant when you see that your point of view is a point of view, rather than when you believe it applies to everyone everywhere for all eternity.

Feeding rat poison to children would be a problem to me, it wouldn't be a problem to these parents feeding it to their kids, otherwise presumably they wouldn't do it. At that point I would ask them why they do it and why they believe it's not dangerous, and if they believe it's dangerous then why do they want to hurt their kids. Maybe it will turn out that what I thought was rat poison was something else, or that they mistaked it for something else, or some other reason that doesn't necessarily imply they were trying to kill their kids. Not believing in objective truth doesn't mean we can't interact with people, or that we can't agree on some things. I don't know about you, maybe to you it would be objective truth that the label on the container meant it really was rat poison and you would torture these parents without asking them anything.

I think it's harder to be a tyrant when you see that your point of view is a point of view, rather than when you believe it applies to everyone everywhere for all eternity. — leo

Maybe it’s easier because you think you can do no wrong.

The parents are feeding rat poison to their children. The children are dying. The parents, however, believe it’s true the rat poison is harmless and they’re actually looking after them. According to you they’re not wrong.

The parents are feeding rat poison to their children. The children are dying. The parents, however, believe it’s true the rat poison is harmless and they’re actually looking after them. According to you they’re not wrong. — AJJ

aka conflating truth with objective facts. Not the same thing.

I actually take facts to be true things, since I don’t see a problem with that (that analytic philosophers say otherwise I don’t take to be a problem). It’s just that I’ve been arguing with you on your terms.

Fair enough. :up:

We have a proposition (we can just leave that unanalyzed for a moment--what it is for there to be a proposition).

We have a fact.

Now, we need matching of the proposition and fact to occur or obtain somehow.

How does that work? — Terrapin Station

No need to match because facts are always already in propositional form. If you disagree then give me an example of a fact that is not in propositional form.

Maybe it’s easier because you think you can do no wrong. — AJJ

No, it's easier because you don't feel like your point of view is more important than everyone else's.

The parents are feeding rat poison to their children. The children are dying. The parents, however, believe it’s true the rat poison is harmless and they’re actually looking after them. According to you they’re not wrong. — AJJ

According to me they shouldn't do that. I wouldn't say they're objectively wrong, because what if it's not rat poison? What if the children aren't dying? What if these children have such a peculiar metabolism that it isn't bad for them? What if the parents have found that mixing rat poison with something else is actually good for health?

If I believe the children are dying because of what their parents feed them, as I mentioned I would react, I would go talk to them, attempt to clarify the situation, see if I haven't misinterpreted something, attempt to understand the motivations of the parents. I wouldn't storm in and torture them because supposedly I have access to objective truth and I can't be wrong.

You're assuming it is objective truth that they are feeding them rat poison, that the children are dying, and that the children are dying because of what they're being fed. Isn't it possible that you could be mistaken about any of those? Or are you so better than everyone else that you have access to objective truth? Are you God maybe?

You take this holier-than-thou attitude with your appeal to emotion using an extreme example, but I'm more worried about all the other more frequent situations, where you would impose what you want onto others because you are convinced you are right and others are wrong. Silencing or locking up or torturing people you see as heretics because they have beliefs or practices that don't match yours.

The cup is on the table. Someone says "the cup is on the table" Person A judges that false. Person B judges that true. According to you, both are mistaken. — creativesoul

Sure. So why do you think I'd say they're both mistaken? — Terrapin Station

Because coherency(lack of equivocation and/or self-contradiction) matters, and you've already claimed the following...

On my view, a mistaken truth-value judgment is either (i) a different person having a different judgment about the relationship of a proposition to a state of affairs--it's mistaken in the different persons' views, or (ii) the same person having a different judgment at a later time, where they feel they should have had the later judgment at the earlier time (and it's mistaken in their view, but perhaps the revision is what's mistaken in other persons' views at that point) — Terrapin Station

You're conflating belief and truth and bordering upon utter nonsense.

...facts are always already in propositional form. If you disagree then give me an example of a fact that is not in propositional form. — Janus

Are we drawing a distinction between what my report is existentially dependent upon and what I'm reporting upon?

If facts are true propositions/statements, then the approach you've taken has some purchase.

What if facts are events(what's happened and/or is happening)?

All sorts of things happen that are not in propositional form.

I think we agree here.

The problem is how can you tell the way things are? You can tell the way things are to you, if others disagree with your idea of the way things are what then? Who is right? — leo

I don't see the mere existence of disagreement as a problem. Some people think their heads are made of glass. They are wrong. No problem there.

If you belong to an objective reality, you don't look at it from the outside, you are within, your thoughts and perceptions depend on that reality in some unknown way, so you don't have access to the way things are, your thoughts and perceptions do not show you the way things are, they show you something that depends on the way things are. If we can't tell what's objectively true then what's the point of using the concept? — leo

Here is the interesting part. I don't think my thoughts and perceptions depend on reality in some "unknown way". Its actually very well understood. See the biology of perception. Any way, even supposing that my perceptions do depend on reality in some unknown way, it does not follow from this that my perceptions don't show me the way things are. The way that they depend on reality might be compatible with them revealing the way things are.

There is then this metaphor about being part of reality and looking at it from "within" rather than from "outside". I don't see that it follows from this that I can't tell how things are either. If I were looking at the inside of a box from some point inside the box, I could see how the box really is - that it has sides and edges and corners etc.

Do you have an argument in mind for the claim that we can't tell how things objectively are? Perhaps you could make it clearer? And anyway, what is the sense of "tell" being used here? If all I need to do in order to "tell" that something is the case is have a true belief about it, then it seems obvious that I can tell how things are. I might just have a true belief. Presumably, you mean something stronger than that by "tell". Perhaps you could clarify what?

PA