So, your formulation above could be modified to:

s is true IFF p, and p is believed OR
s is true IFF p, and not-p is believed — Janus

s is true IFF p and (q or not q).

Not much of an improvement.

The only sticking point I have found here is with folk - Metaphysician Undercover, for one - who cannot see that Davidson is talking about our beliefs as a whole, and so focus on the very small number of beliefs about which we disagree. OF course, these are the ones we find most interesting and hence that we spend the most time on. — Banno

I haven't followed the thread, but I'll comment on this. The point I make, and I believe this is consistent with Wittgenstein when he says that a concept is fundamentally unbounded, is that the background is lacking in agreement. Disagreement (unboundedness), is the background for all beliefs. Agreement is something which we must create through effort. We draw a boundary for a particular purpose, and others may accept, or agree to that boundary.

In the process whereby a person learns a language, as a child, such agreements are being created, and these were not existent in the child's natural state prior to this learning. The child learns boundaries. We might say that the child has an agreeable attitude, and therefore accepts the voice of authority, but the agreements are not there. An agreeable attitude is not itself an agreement. Yet the child has the capacity to learn the language without supporting the language acquisition on pre-existing agreement.

So I think that what Moliere refers to above, as "taking truth as fundamental", or "accepting as true", is more like submission to authority. Then the learning process is not a process based in fundamental agreements, it's based in submission, which implies that disagreement is what is fundamental, and the disagreement is overcome through the child's will to submit to the authorities.

In fact the further point he makes later is something I've stated a few times before -- that (meaningful) disagreement takes place on a background of agreement. — Moliere

So the point here is that the true background is one of disagreement, from which agreement is created. You misrepresent "disagreement" here by talking about meaningful disagreement. Meaning and agreement are closely tied, such that meaning is implicit within agreement, agreement is inherently meaningful. Disagreement, as the opposite, is therefore fundamentally meaningless. Meaningful disagreement is an oxymoron.

But the point, going back to partial untranslatability, has more to do with how charity is not an option, but is forced upon us. — Moliere

This gets to the point of why disagreement, and the consequent submission to the authorities, are fundamental. But I wouldn't go to the point of saying that charity is not an option, and is forced on us, I would say that we willfully submit to the authorities because to choose any other option would be completely irrational. And this submission is "accepting as true".

As for the last paragraph... I think it has to do with his attitude towards belief. — Banno

I appreciate you and Moliere correcting the setting.

Cheers!

...one of the cogent ideas in Davidson is the divide between belief and truth.

It's obvious that we can believe things that are true, and that we can believe things that are false. What is less obvious perhaps is that this implies a chasm between belief and truth. They are different sorts of things - or better, they do quite different things in our language. — Banno

Davidson holds that we become aware of the role that truth plays in our conceptual schema/belief via language use, or words to that affect/effect. He concludes, from this, that truth and language are inseparable. A coherent move.

Belief is insufficient for truth. A belief can be both coherent and false. Thus, there's a distinction between belief and truth. Truth is presupposed within all thought and belief somewhere along the line.

Why is it important to philosophers to find links between belief and truth? They want their beliefs to be true; and erroneously think that the answer is to find what it is that links belief and truth. THat is, they want to understand what counts as good reasons for a belief. — Banno

Warrant or justification does not guarantee true belief they do count as good reasons for belief. So, if they want to understand the links between truth and belief as well as wanting their beliefs to be true, then they had better understand what sorts of things can be true and what makes them so just as much as they understand the difference between being well-grounded and being convincingly argued for.

I think it helps... just a wee bit... to start out by knowing what belief is to begin with. That's another topic altogether though. Just pointing out a fatal flaw, in a largely coherent position.

...the world does not work that way. The world does what it will, regardless of what we believe.

And it's this segregation of belief and truth that is behind those last few paragraphs. — Banno

What about all of the things that world does as a direct result of our beliefs?

in order to understand an alien language we must assume that overwhelmingly they believe much the same sort of thing as we do...Davidson is talking about our beliefs as a whole. — Banno

I understand that, but Davidson's targets are Quine and Kuhn (and your target earlier was model-dependant realism). The problem is that these targets are not themselves talking about our beliefs as a whole either. Quine is not implying that whole languages of thought might arise untranslatably (he barely mentions translatability in that context). Kuhn doesn't mention translatability at all, and in fact specifically says that incommensuarable (his term) does not mean not translatable, and he goes on to use the fact that we share enough common beliefs to be able to recognise and even translate different paradigms. Hawking certainly is confining his thoughts to the technical terminology required by different paradigms in physics.

So I'm still (third read through now) not seeing the justification for Davidson's switch to language as signifier of a sufficiently different conceptual scheme as to make it incommensurable. He seems to have just assumed this, when it comes to the Fit-Reality option of his four types of conceptual scheme (the one I'm primarily interested in).

It seems the need to link truth and belief is for some overwhelming - and it's clear why; we want our beliefs to be true, after all. — Banno

For some? What is the meaning of the second proposition (in the meta-language) in ""The cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat"? Either we are saying truth is indefinable outside of formal languages (Tarski's own conclusion), or we're sneaking in correspondence by the back door without declaring as such. What more can you do than believe the cat is on the mat? It's not the case that in the real world the cat is either on the real world mat or not, there's no 'cat' in the real world, no 'mat' and probably not even an 'on'. There's just atoms, maybe, strings, possibly. How do you tie together the idea that the cat really is on the mat with the idea that most of what makes up the cat can't even be pinned down to a location somewhere in the universe, let alone 'on the mat'? Maybe I'm wrong about atoms, I don't understand quantum physics (it shows doesn't it?), but I do understand child development, and it's just not feasible without some quasi-religious belief in human rationality, that things like object definition and spatiotemporal location are not theories children develop, much as Quine says.

I have no problem at all with saying that truth is a property of propositions, I'm quite laissez-faire about definitions, but to do so simply leaves the problem of whether the cat actually is on the mat unresolved.

It's obvious that we can believe things that are true, and that we can believe things that are false. — Banno

Not at the time. This is the model Ramsey uses - in 'Truth and Probability (1926). Our beliefs are bets placed against their future utility (which is related to the way the world actually is, but we never get to access that, so we can never say how). So all we can say is that a belief turned out to be false. It does not make any sense to say it was false at the time because beliefs are measured in certainty, not binary true/false. If there is a 20% chance that I can jump a chasm, then I'm right to have 20% certainty that I can, regardless of whether it transpires that I actually can.

So the proposal is the modified T-sentence

s is true IFF p, and p is believed — Banno

This modifies the Ramsey theory in a way that takes away one on the key components. You're placing truth as a property of s, not as a property of a. As a property of s (the statement), belief in it is redundant, we can rely on Tarski, but that only gets us to "..iff the cat is on the mat", which is not far enough to reject conceptual schemes, themselves based on the resolution of that modality. To deal with the resolution we must put the concept in the belief in one or other option "the cat is on the mat", and measure options there.

The relevance of this to incommensurable conceptual schemes being that relations and definitions of objects fall into this category - ie, they have beliefs (bets) about them. Like whether there is such a thing as a 'cat', or a 'mat' and whether 'on' is even a concept at all. Not that I'm suggesting people weigh up the options in these cases, but they'll weigh what they think of a possibilities.

It's tempting to say that they do not have the concept that others have a mind distinct from their own. I think that's a mischaracterisation; I think we get closer to the truth when we talk about their not having a belief in the minds of others. — Banno

This seems like a very convoluted way of talking to me. Why would a 2 year old have a concept of 'other minds' which it rejects as not likely? Where would it get the concept from in the first place if it's only going to reject it. Does it also have the concept of a microprocessor, only to decide that such a thing probably doesn't exist as it has no evidence for one? What is wrong with the far more simple explanation that they do not have these concepts that they show no behavioural evidence of having?

You cannot talk to a severely autistic person about the contents of another's mind, it just doesn't make sense to them, they have not got the concept that attaches to the language being used. You cannot talk to a colourblind-synasthete about the colour they see associated with the number 6, we have no language for their colours. Yes, these are small issues within a much broader frame of agreement, but they cannot be dismissed as different beliefs about the same fundamental structures,

What about all of the things that world does as a direct result of our beliefs? — creativesoul

Direction fo fit and such.

So I'm still (third read through now) not seeing the justification for Davidson's switch to language as signifier of a sufficiently different conceptual scheme as to make it incommensurable. — Isaac

Well, let's not kill the messenger. Davidson approaches the discussion in this way both because it is his area of interest, and because it presents a common ground for disparate branches of conceptual relativism.

The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common coordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparabil- ity. What we need, it seems to me, is some idea of the considera- tions that set the limits to conceptual contrast. There are extreme suppositions that founder on paradox or contradiction; there are modest examples we have no trouble understanding. What determines where we cross from the merely strange or novel to the absurd'?

We may accept the doctrine that associates having a language with having a conceptual scheme. The relation may be supposed to be this: if conceptual schemes differ, so do languages. But speakers of different languages may share a conceptual scheme provided there is a way of translating one language into the other. Studying the criteria of translation is therefore a way of focussing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes. If conceptual schemes aren't associated with languages in this way, the original problem is needlessly doubled, for then we would have to imagine the mind, with its ordinary categories, operating with a language with its organizing structure. Under the circumstances we would certainly want to ask who is to be master.

But first I feel it important to note that these are stock characters -- the materialist and the immaterialist. At least they are stock characters unless you happen to have some specific philosophers you have in mind. I mean I can imagine referencing Berkeley vs. Epicurus, as some sort of arch- versions of both, but they didn't speak to one another and I'm just conjuring them up as arch-examples.

I feel that's important to note because I'm kinda super into history-of-whatever. That's my jam. So stock characters stand as paradigmatic (to us) examples of thought, not as real examples. And the reason I like the historical approach so much is that it often dispels these phantoms of thought and imagination when we look closely. — Moliere

I agree the stock characters create an atmosphere of caricature. At the same time, I've encountered, on these forums, both simplistic reductive materialism and its immaterialist nemesis, duking it out in a nearly caricatural dialogue.

I've simplified my "stock characters" for the sake of clarity and non-complexity. The historical approach sounds useful too.

What is the meaning of the second proposition (in the meta-language) in ""The cat is on the mat" is true iff the cat is on the mat"? — Isaac

Well, do you believe that the cat is on the mat? then you will hold "the cat is on the mat" to be true. And if not, then I suppose you will not. It doesn't follow that you believe the cat is on the mat only if "the cat is on the mat" corresponds to ...whatever. That's not sneaking correspondence back in.

What more can you do than believe the cat is on the mat? — Isaac

Yep. It's the belief that is salient, not it's cause, reason or justification; nor the correspondence of the statement to the facts.

It's not the case that in the real world the cat is either on the real world mat or not, there's no 'cat' in the real world, no 'mat' and probably not even an 'on'. There's just atoms, maybe, strings, possibly. — Isaac

A side issue - I think this is wrong, in that it gives primacy to strings over cats. Both are perhaps real.

So partial untranslatability. I will admit that the Ketch and Yawl example seems *extremely* close. And kinda. . .. uhhh... let's just say poor people have to google to understand it. All the same -- I think it makes sense to say that we do, in fact, reinterpret our conversation partners words to mean something else. They don't have to mean what we think they mean. And the closeness of the example is actually strong because it shows one case where we are very close but, rather than attributing a belief to another person, we accept the belief and reinterpret the words.

That's big.

And I think one good thing Davidson notes is that we do this on pain of not being understood. — Moliere

This is clear to me. We assume a background of shared belief and practice charity to facilitate communication.

In that situation -- might the people involved wish to be misunderstood? Maybe not consciously. That's a psychological matter. But maybe they just want to assert their belief and have others believe it. — Moliere

Rephrasing this to see if you think I understand you:

Broadly speaking, to facilitate communication (or "translation") charity and the presupposition of a background of shared belief are brought into play.

But in the case of ideological nemeses duking it out, charity is suspended and the presuppsition of a background of shared belief is abandoned.

In the former case, communication is the priority.

In the latter case, something like evangelism is the priority.

This is the model Ramsey uses - in 'Truth and Probability (1926). — Isaac

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/7048428.pdf

Where? It's just that the you use notation may differ from that in the article. Is a, for instance, an individual?

Should we work through the Ramsey article? Davidson deals with it in True to the Facts, concluding that it's not interestingly dissimilar to Tarski's approach. It's not an easy read. And see how went astray.

It's tempting to say that they do not have the concept that others have a mind distinct from their own. I think that's a mischaracterisation; I think we get closer to the truth when we talk about their not having a belief in the minds of others.
— Banno

This seems like a very convoluted way of talking to me. Why would a 2 year old have a concept of 'other minds' which it rejects as not likely? — Isaac

I think you misunderstand me; we must take care with the scope of the belief statements.

Let Jenny be out 2-year-old. there are four possible beliefs she might have:

• Jenny believes that other people have minds
• Jenny does not believe that other people have minds
• Jenny believes that other people do not have minds
• Jenny does not believe that other people do not have minds

some of these can be paired up consistently, others, not without contradiction. You perhaps have taken be as asserting the second option; but I wish to assert both the second and the last - that is, that Jenny has no beliefs about the minds of other people.

I will defend this perhaps convolute approach on the grounds that it avoids the reification that so often occurs when we talk of concepts.

I don't see how an evangelist who commenced uncharitably would get very far.

I don't see how an evangelist who commenced uncharitably would get very far. — Banno

I'm thinking strictly of charity in connection to the presupposition of a background of shared belief. Not the patient and kind kind, or any other kind.

But maybe they just want to assert their belief and have others believe it. — Moliere

evangelist — Banno

The ideological evangelist is a perfect counter-case to the ketch and the yawl.

The nature of the evangelistic spirit is such that a foundational divergence of belief is presupposed. The ideological evangelist begins by presupposing his would-be convert is mistaken about the fundamental character, or substance, or significance, of the real.

We see it all the time on the forums.

All this, granted, takes place in the context of a background of shared belief. But the implications of the distinction between trivial and non-trivial cases are brought into focus here.

Me, too.

Came across this:

If people thousands of years ago used Davidson's reasoning, they would reject the possibility that science would one day rely on symbols and words that can't be translated into their language.

If they thought this, they would be wrong.

Davidson can't be right.

but I did point out that type adding a tautology did nothing.

Why the anger?

it’s always easier to dismiss an argument if you begin by misconstruing it.

it’s always easier to dismiss an argument if you begin by misconstruing it. — Banno

Scott Soames said that, so I'd be surprised if its a misconstrual. He also said Davidson misunderstood Tarski. Tarski didn't provide a formula that conveys our common understanding of truth, but Davidson seems to think he did.

I'm not angry. I don't, except in extreme cases, take people's behavior personally, even in the 'real-world' context where I deal with them face to face; much less on an internet site where people are pretty much strangers to me.

I'm just calling you out on your tendency to often assert that people are misguided without having the good faith to explain why you think that.

Your answer above is cryptic enough to be a non-explanation. And you haven't answered questions I have posed to you directly many times, in this thread and others. That's fair enough; you don't owe it to me or anyone to respond if you don't want to; but if you feel it necessary to comment on what you claim is someone's misguidedness, you should do it in good faith and be prepared to offer a decent explanation.

You could start by explaining in adequate detail how you think the logic of the T-sentence is different than the logic of correspondence. I have raised this point several times and have received no answer.

You could start by explaining in adequate detail how you think the logic of the T-sentence is different than the logic of correspondence. I have raised this point several times and have received no answer. — Janus

Should modalities be invoked here?

I'm not sure what you have in mind.

(I won't be able to respond further until tomorrow, probably, since I'm moving house in a couple weeks and have too much to do).

I don't know why exactly, but I'm getting the same vibe as in the Naming and Necessity reading group thread.

Nevermind if what I'm suggesting is irrelevant.

So Davidson misunderstood the applicability of Tarski, and if we use our common conception of truth in his argument, it falls apart.

I'll explain it next week.

Davidson misunderstood the applicability of Tarski, and if we use our common conception of truth in his argument, it falls apart.

I'll explain it next week. — frank

Nice teaser. Looking forward to it. Have a good weekend. :smile:

Davidson can't be right. — frank

Has a philosopher ever been right?

Convincing, maybe...

Has a philosopher ever been right?

Convincing, maybe... — ZzzoneiroCosm

Good point.

s is true IFF p, and p is believed OR
s is true IFF p, and not-p is believed — Janus

Perhaps putting the negation inside the scope of the belief relieves you of saying nothing.

I'm not convinced.

Davidson misunderstood the applicability of Tarski, — frank

He misapplied it, rather than misunderstood it. He took a derivation of truth in terms of meaning and flipped it into a derivation of meaning in terms of truth.