Love this.

Nothing.

Of course - that's what the T-sentence says.

"It's true that my teacup is on my desk" IFF my teacup is on my desk. — Banno

Understanding begins to dawn, I think...

Work beckons, but this is good. Thanks.

...unless he has universal agreement, then it sets out how Tarski thinks it functions in logic — Isaac

Well, he gets his whole own section in the SEP article on truth; more than classical correspondence, coherence and pragmatic theories put together....

If one would make sense of philosophical discussions of truth over the last hundred years, it would be best to start with Tarski.

It's another example of how the development of logic after Frege's work gave us a set of tools that enable us to make clear many issues that come from lack of clear expression - the analytic approach to philosophy.

T-sentences are sublimely trivial. That's why they are so powerful.

Take a T-sentence and hold meaning constant by putting the very same expression on both sides...

"p" is true IFF p

...and you have an account of truth.

Take a true T-sentence, where "p" is some proposition and q gives its truth conditions,

"p" is true IFF q

and you have in q exactly what is needed to set out the meaning of p.

Between the two you have an account of the relation between meaning and truth.

It is sublimely trivial.

Cheers.

We all know full well when it's not true
— creativesoul

Nonsense. This would imply that there's never disagreement. — Isaac

That claim is not at odds with disagreeing about the claim. The point is that we all know full well what it takes in order for the statement to be true.

To your point, we do not always know when it is. We do quite often though. So, not nonsense at all, just not as clear as it could've been and not properly qualified.

We disagree when one of us believes the cat is on the mat and another does not. We both know full well that if the cat is there then the statement is true. We also both know full well that if the cat is not there, then the statement is false. We must know that much in order to even disagree upon whether or not the statement is true.

Whether or not the statement is true and what it takes in order for it to be so is perfectly well understood by many children under the age of four. My twenty-seven-month-old granddaughter knew full well when she heard someone say there was nothing in the fridge that that was false. She opened the door and showed the speaker their mistake. We all know full well when it's true because we all know full well what it takes in order to be so.

We all know full well that it's true when the cat is on the mat. That's all I was saying.

it's simply not how the word is used.

On what authority do you define words for a language community which clearly uses them in defiance of your edict? — Isaac

Mirror mirror...

Pots and kettles...

I'm not defining terms for them. I have no issue at all with acknowledging different accepted uses. You seem a little chippy...

Not all senses of "truth" are on equal footing. Many nowadays use it when they're talking about what they and/or others believe. That's what's going on when someone utters "my truth", "your truth", "his truth", "her truth", "our truth", and/or "their truth". They are referring to belief. That kind of speech is often used to openly attribute respect and value to another's person by virtue of attributing respect and value to another's opinion and/or worldview. People take lots of stuff personally. The same thing is often happening when people say things like "everyone has a valid opinion". It's about showing consideration to others. So, that particular use isn't all bad(like morally unacceptable or anything), but there are much better ways of being considerate to others without sewing and perpetuating such confusion into the public domain.

Not all opinions are valid. Not all belief is true. It is best to keep that in mind.

...and ummmm.... I'm not alone in that, not in the least.

Which one of these are you proposing? Which is true? — Banno

None of these. As I mentioned earlier, my use of the term "truthmaker" did not have the truthmaker theory in view. As far as I can tell, the problem with the truthmaker theory (given in the SEP article) is that it's all about existence; the existence of things, which makes a sentence true. I don't want to restrict whatever makes a sentence true, or whatever leads us to judge a sentence as true (or false), only to existents. If I'm wrong, and truthmakers are not restricted to existents, then I'm unsure how they differ from truth conditions.

Take a true T-sentence, where "p" is some proposition and q gives its truth conditions, — Banno

Since you mentioned it, I can see now that this concept is closer to what I was going for. However, as I mentioned earlier wrt deflationism, I find truth conditions are not inconsistent with the correspondence theory in terms of how they make a sentence true. Is there any theory or explanation as to how truth conditions make a sentence true, or as to how truth conditions are met?

Is there any theory or explanation as to how truth conditions make a sentence true, or as to how truth conditions are met? — Luke

What is "make" doing here? You said it's not causal. We have the logical relation of the IFF in the T-sentence- what more do you want?

Take a T-sentence and hold meaning constant by putting the very same expression on both sides...

"p" is true IFF p

...and you have an account of truth.

Take a true T-sentence, where "p" is some proposition and q gives its truth conditions,

"p" is true IFF q

and you have in q exactly what is needed to set out the meaning of p.

Between the two you have an account of the relation between meaning and truth.

It is sublimely trivial. — Banno

If "p" is true IFF p, and "p" is true IFF q, then p and q are the very same thing. I agree that this is very trivial, but it says absolutely nothing useful about the relation between meaning and truth. That is because you've exclude meaning from truth, by reducing truth to a statement of identity, saying that "q" and "p" must signify the very same thing.

Is there any theory or explanation as to how truth conditions make a sentence true, or as to how truth conditions are met?
— Luke

What is "make" doing here? You said it's not causal. — Banno

Possibly the same thing it's doing in your quote from Davidson, where he refers to "the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false". I don't think he's using it to mean anything causal. Or is he?

We have the logical relation of the IFF in the T-sentence- what more do you want? — Banno

I'm asking how we know when truth conditions are met. I'm also asking how this differs from the correspondence theory.

This would imply that there's never disagreement. — Isaac


Why? — Banno

The point is that we all know full well what it takes in order for the statement to be true. — creativesoul

As written we can't 'all know' full well when it's not true otherwise there'd be no disagreements about that. There are. There are relativists, there are idealists, there are solipsists. They all disagree about what it takes for a proposition to be untrue. So unless some of us are lying... some know, others clearly don't.

I think this goes back to what I said about interchangeability. I gave my list, but others would give a slightly different list. I think I get what you're saying about T-sentences capturing all that, but many would still frame their disagreements as being about the circumstances in which a proposition is true.

Someone might, for example, take the position that "the cat on the mat" is true if and only if a reasonable number of their community agreed. I think they'd be wrong. Or that it can be "true for them". Again, wrong. But what are we to make of the fact that there are people who make such arguments. It seems rather indecorous of us to assume they're lying, or being stubborn. So it seems we've no choice but to concede that some people do not know when "the cat is on the mat" is true.

I just want to add a little more to what I said in my last post, and I apologize for interrupting the ongoing discussion.

One of the main differences between Davidson and Wittgenstein is over the idea of social convention, Davidson doesn’t believe social conventionalism is a necessary ingredient to successful communication. (And, to be fair this is the way he interprets Wittgenstein, so he believes he is expanding the notion of what it means to communicate. I happen to think this is incorrect, but of course we can go around and around on how Wittgenstein should be interpreted.) Davidson uses intention, and again, this is where he thinks Wittgenstein leads, it’s a wider form of social agreement for Davidson, which includes what the speaker intends by their utterances. This is Davidson’s interpretation of a form of life. However, what do we mean by conventions, if not the very activity derived from social activity, including the idea of rule-following, and the social practices that follow. This, in my opinion, guts Wittgenstein’s ideas of forms of life.

Not all senses of "truth" are on equal footing. Many nowadays use it when they're talking about what they and/or others believe. That's what's going on when someone utters "my truth", "your truth", "his truth", "her truth", "our truth", and/or "their truth". They are referring to belief. — creativesoul

No, they are referring to truth. If they are understood, then that's what the word means. There's no god-given dictionary, and if there were it's certainly not the one you happen to have in your head. They may not be referring to truth in the sense you mean it, but you are not the authority on what the word 'truth' ought to mean.

We might, when practising some very strict system of thinking (like one of the many branches of logic) have rules in place about what words mean. But these rules are like those of chess. They don't apply to anyone not playing chess. It's a category error to say that people in their ordinary conversations are speaking wrongly because they don't use a word in accordance with the rules set down for it's use in some given mental practice.

:up:

No, they are referring to truth. If they are understood, then that's what the word means. There's no god-given dictionary, and if there were it's certainly not the one you happen to have in your head. They may not be referring to truth in the sense you mean it, but you are not the authority on what the word 'truth' ought to mean. — Isaac

The irony. Pots and kettles once again.

I've had many discussions over the years with different people who talk like that. I knew some of them quite personally. I understood them just fine. "Your truth" refers to what that the listener believed to be true. The same holds good with "true for you".

It's a category error to say that people in their ordinary conversations are speaking wrongly because they don't use a word in accordance with the rules set down for it's use in some given mental practice. — Isaac

Who has done that?

Possibly the same thing it's doing in your quote from Davidson, where he refers to "the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false". — Luke

Suppose p⊃q. One might phrase this as "p makes q true". No causality is implied.

That's how I read the bit from Davidson you cite.

I don't see any way to proceed. You say "

None of these — Luke

So you are not talking of any of the accepted truthmaker theories.

I'm asking how we know when truth conditions are met. — Luke

And again, as in the discussion on this thread with @Isaac, how we know it's true is a very different question to what it means for it to be true. It's the difference between the cat being on the mat and our knowing that the cat is on the mat. Thy are not the same question.

The sticking point seems to be accepting this distinction between belief and truth.

I'm also asking how this differs from the correspondence theory. — Luke

Davidson makes use of correspondence in various places, but in relation to belief rather than truth. T-sentences do not set out a correspondence theory of truth.

You say

As far as I can tell, the problem with the truthmaker theory (given in the SEP article) is that it's all about existence; the existence of things, which makes a sentence true. — Luke

See Truthmakers in the Sep article on truth. I(t makes it clear that the theory of truthmakers is what you are rejecting, that "there must be a thing that makes each truth true". As that short section makes clear, the rejection of truthmakers amounts to the rejection of correspondence. Riffing on that, the attempt to introduce truthmakers into the discussion was a fraught attempt to reinvigorate correspondence theories of truth.

So as I said, I've no clear notion of how to proceed in this discussion.

, ,

OK, just to be clear, I am adopting a particular grammar here. It's I think a grammar that is common to all philosophical thinking. It is to be seen as a cleaning up of the ambiguities found in common conversations concerning belief and truth.

Truth is a unary. T(p) is a general representation of the statements, propositions, sentences, facts, or whatever you will, that we cast as true: "p is true"

Belief is binary. B(x,p) is a general representation of the statements, propositions, sentences, facts, or whatever you will, p, that we cast as being believed by x. "x holds that p is true"

I'm a bit surprised to find myself explaining this. I would not have thought is contentious.

Belief and truth are different.

I'm not sure I'm versed well enough to speak on these conceptual schemes of Davidson. I'm not sure what Banno means here by:

The alien conceptual scheme can only be recognised as a conceptual scheme if there is an interpretation for in in our conceptual scheme. — Banno

I'm not entirely sure if it is the case that conceptual schemes must be interpretable between them, other than through their construction of reality.

See Davidson's On the very idea of a conceptual scheme.

How would one recognise that one was looking at an alien's conceptual scheme, unless one has at least partially interpreted it? To recognise it as a conceptual scheme is give it an interpretation.

...

As written we can't 'all know' full well when it's not true otherwise there'd be no disagreements about that. There are. There are relativists, there are idealists, there are solipsists. — Isaac

I find it quite telling that a twenty-seven-month-old child knows when "there's nothing in the fridge" is false, and so many 'highly educated' adults seem to have somehow talked themselves right out of it.

:brow:

Someone might, for example, take the position that "the cat on the mat" is true if and only if a reasonable number of their community agreed. I think they'd be wrong. Or that it can be "true for them". Again, wrong. But what are we to make of the fact that there are people who make such arguments. It seems rather indecorous of us to assume they're lying, or being stubborn. So it seems we've no choice but to concede that some people do not know when "the cat is on the mat" is true. — Isaac

Insincerity pervades everyday discourse, I find it highly suspicious for anyone who knows what "the cat is on the mat" means to deny that it is true only if, only when, and only because the cat is on the mat. If they have never ever thought about what sorts of things can be true and what it takes in order for them to be so, then we have an interesting case.

Upon what grounds would anyone deny that the statement "the cat is on the mat" is true only if, only when, and only because the cat is on the mat?

A twenty-seven-month-old child put her knowledge of when a statement is false on display for all to see. She was told "there's nothing in the fridge". She knew better. She uttered a toddler sized version of "Yes there is!" when she said "uh, huh!" as she opened the door to show the speaker that they were wrong! She pointed to things inside and said, "Ders dat, nnn dat, nnn dat...

She knows when "there's nothing in the fridge" is false.

I see no possible way for anyone to even be able to arrive at any philosophical position without already knowing at least as much as a child who's barely stringing two or three words together.

It seems rather indecorous of us to assume they're lying — Isaac

No need to assume that they're lying... They could be very confused about what sorts of things can be true and what it takes in order for them to be so.

How would one recognise that one was looking at an alien's conceptual scheme, unless one has at least partially interpreted it? To recognise it as a conceptual scheme is give it an interpretation — Banno

Perhaps Davidson thought translation from one linguistic community to another was unproblematic because he understood perception as a merely causal prompting of discursive judgment in thought and talk. Assuming perception to be non-conceptual, he may have assumed, as Kuhn remarked about Quine, “that two men receiving the same stimulus must have the same sensation and therefore has little to say about the extent to which a translator must be able to describe the world to which the language being translated applies.”

That one recognizes something doesn’t necessarily mean that one already has a scheme ready-made for it, the same scheme that it was produced within. One can transform the nature of one’s interpretive framework such as to accommodate what may at first appear incoherent.

Suppose p⊃q. One might phrase this as "p makes q true". No causality is implied.

That's how I read the bit from Davidson you cite. — Banno

And my saying that "p makes q true" needn't commit me to a causal implication either.

So you are not talking of any of the accepted truthmaker theories. — Banno

Yes, as I've explained more than once, I was using the term "truthmaker" only as an expedient for whatever makes a sentence true. As I also stated in a recent post, the concept of truth conditions is closer to what I was aiming for when I used the term "truthmaker" earlier.

See Truthmakers in the Sep article on truth. I(t makes it clear that the theory of truthmakers is what you are rejecting, that "there must be a thing that makes each truth true". As that short section makes clear, the rejection of truthmakers amounts to the rejection of correspondence. Riffing on that, the attempt to introduce truthmakers into the discussion was a fraught attempt to reinvigorate correspondence theories of truth. — Banno

Thanks for the link. Section 6 of the article discusses my point and answers the questions I've been raising here. Specifically:

As we explained Convention T in section 2.2, the primary role of a Tarski biconditional of the form ┌┌ϕ┐ is true if and only if ϕ┐ is to fix whether ϕ is in the extension of ‘is true’ or not. But it can also be seen as stating the truth conditions of ϕ. Both rely on the fact that the unquoted occurrence of ϕ is an occurrence of an interpreted sentence, which has a truth value, but also provides its truth conditions upon occasions of use.

...

For instance, for a simple sentence like ‘Snow is white’, the theory tells us that the sentence is true if the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies ‘white’. This can be understood as telling us that the truth conditions of ‘Snow is white’ are those conditions in which the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’.

As we saw in sections 3 and 4, the Tarskian apparatus is often seen as needing some kind of supplementation to provide a full theory of truth. A full theory of truth conditions will likewise rest on how the Tarskian apparatus is put to use. In particular, just what kinds of conditions those in which the referent of ‘snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’ are will depend on whether we opt for realist or anti-realist theories. The realist option will simply look for the conditions under which the stuff snow bears the property of whiteness; the anti-realist option will look to the conditions under which it can be verified, or asserted with warrant, that snow is white.

...

...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. It is typical of thoroughgoing deflationist theories to present a non-truth-conditional theory of the contents of sentences: a non-truth-conditional account of what makes truth-bearers meaningful. We take it this is what is offered, for instance, by the use theory of propositions in Horwich (1990). It is certainly one of the leading ideas of Field (1986; 1994), which explore how a conceptual role account of content would ground a deflationist view of truth. Once one has a non-truth-conditional account of content, it is then possible to add a deflationist truth predicate, and use this to give purely deflationist statements of truth conditions. But the starting point must be a non-truth-conditional view of what makes truth-bearers meaningful.

Both deflationists and anti-realists start with something other than correspondence truth conditions. But whereas an anti-realist will propose a different theory of truth conditions, a deflationists will start with an account of content which is not a theory of truth conditions at all. The deflationist will then propose that the truth predicate, given by the Tarski biconditionals, is an additional device, not for understanding content, but for disquotation. It is a useful device, as we discussed in section 5.3, but it has nothing to do with content. To a deflationist, the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth. — SEP article on Truth

EDIT: I think I understand the difference now, although I find the deflationary theory lacks the connection with (or "content" of) the world that I normally associate with the use of the word "truth".

I find the deflationary theory lacks the connection with (or "content" of) the world that I normally associate with the use of the word "truth". — Luke

:up:

I'm a bit surprised to find myself explaining this. I would not have thought is contentious.

Belief and truth are different. — Banno

I don't think anyone is claiming truth and belief are the same (nor can I really see any cause to think they might be). When people say something like "my truth, your truth", or some such, they are treating truth as a property of beliefs. They may still be confused in doing so, but if you have such an argument to make, then at least address the error. They are not simply saying belief and truth are the same thing.

"My truth" can refer to the collection of beliefs of mine which I am virtually certain of, as opposed to those about which I remain unsure. Again, this may be completely muddle-headed, but it is not simply assuming belief and truth are the same thing so requires a better counter-argument than simply pointing out why they're not.

I can see the philosophical merit in restricting truth to a property of propositions. I can also see the philosophical merit in a T-sentence definition of what it means for a proposition to be true in these terms. I think it clears up a lot of confusion - particularly the reification of truth.

But people do successfully use the word truth other ways. They communicate felicitously with 'true' as a mere emphasis of certainty attached to a belief, likewise with 'true' acting as a declaration of trust or faith, likewise with 'true' acting as a standing (more or less) for 'successful' with regards to policy, likewise with 'true' meaning something more like 'any rational person would agree with me here'...

All I'm saying is that people are both wrong/confused about what 'true' means, and people have different (but perfectly successful) uses of 'true'. It's simply not that case to say that 'we all know what true means', or 'we all know when a statement is true' as if everyone with a differing use were just being ornery.

I find it quite telling that a twenty-seven-month-old child knows when "there's nothing in the fridge" is false — creativesoul

Yet you've not demonstrated that to be the case within the context of this discussion. This discussion is about what 'false' means. "What is truth?". That's the title. Since your granddaughter did not use the word 'false' all you've shown is that she acted in accordance with what you think 'false' means, not that she knows what the word 'false' means.

Notwithstanding that, I find the whole story (whilst endearing) to miss the point completely. Consider if I say "There's nothing in my hat", and some smart-arse replies "False. There's air in your hat!"

Do we really want to say the smart-arse is right? Or would we rather say the smart-arse has misunderstood what I meant by 'nothing' in that context?

You granddaughter, bless her, did not spot a falsehood, but misunderstood the meaning of 'nothing', which any more en-cultured adult would have realised meant 'nothing-for-you', not literally nothing. Other wise almost everybody would be wrong when they say 'nothing' unless they're referring to a vacuum.

The point of all this is that language is not about the literal words we say, we can make mistakes (derangement of epitaphs), we can use the same word to mean several different things, we can be sarcastic, ironic, flattering (all of which involve lies)... and our interlocutors understand our intent and act accordingly.

Unless we're to reify the concept 'truth' to some Platonic form floating in the ether, then is just a word. It does a job and it, like every other word out there, does a different job in different circumstances.

The only analysis of it is the success (or otherwise) of its uses. Everything else is sophistry.

There's no god-given dictionary, and if there were it's certainly not the one you happen to have in your head. They may not be referring to truth in the sense you mean it, but you are not the authority on what the word 'truth' ought to mean. — Isaac

For Ramsey, "p is true" means the same thing as "p". — Banno

For unenlightened, "p is true" means "p is false, but I want you to believe p."

For unenlightened, "p is true" means "p is false, but I want you to believe p." — unenlightened

No, this is wrong. A "true" statement is one which expresses an honest judgement. So "p is true" means the statement "p" is what the person making that statement honestly believes. What many in this thread seem to ignore is that "true" and "false" are attributed to judgements. Ignoring this simple feature of truth leads to endless discussion getting nowhere.