...here it is:

The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the beleif. — Searle

Making the Social World, p. 27, italics in original.

That whole book is worth a read, and might go towards avoiding our descent into the narcissism of small differences.

For the casual readers' sake alone...

A cat's belief that a dog is in the house is not an attitude that the cat has towards the proposition "a dog is in the house". That's patently impossible. The cat's belief does not consist of meaningful marks or attitudes towards meaningful marks. It consists of correlations drawn between a dog, sheer terror(fear), and all sorts of other directly perceptible things.

The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the beleif.
— Searle

Making the Social World — Banno

He's not talking about language less creatures' beliefs.

Searle employs the objective/subjective dichotomy in interesting ways when he draws a distinction between using them in an epistemic sense and an ontological sense and the historical conflation of the two when it comes to any and all positions which deny direct perception... idealism(s), arguments from illusion, argument from science, Stove's Gem, etc.

I've had several of his books for years. That library will not be thoroughly cracked and enjoyed until I have more spare time. Been collecting for over a decade though.

He's not talking about language less creatures' beliefs. — creativesoul

He is setting up exactly that as one topic of Chapter 4.

I'll have to read it then. His notion of "proposition" must be notably different to yours in that they cannot be equivalent to statements or assertions. I hope he's not one of those who claim that propositions are somehow existentially independent of language. Either way, I've found him helpful in a few ways. If there are some things I disagree with, then it would be quite normal. As before, I'll give it a look. Thanks for the link...

Well shit!

No link. For some reason, I believed you'd given one. Do you have one? I do not remember that title, so I doubt if I have a copy of it. I'll have to look to be sure...

Yeah, you'll have to buy the book instead of watching the video. Damn.

:wink:

So be it...

Probably best not to delve too deeply into belief though, given this is a thread about truth.

Well...

Unless that is, truth emerges within some language less creatures' thought and belief formation itself as compared/contrasted to emerging as a property of true statements, assertions, claims, propositions, etc.

"snow is white " is true iff s..........All we need to do now is work out what s might be.
— Banno

My attempt:

I believe that I am observing something that is atmospheric water vapour frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer

Rather than keep saying "I believe that I am observing something that is atmospheric water vapour frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer" it is more convenient to say "I believe that I am observing snow"

Where "snow" is defined as "something that is atmospheric water vapour frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer".

In other words, "white" is part of the definition of "snow".

I need no knowledge of the world to know that "snow is white", only knowledge of language.

In Tarski's terms, I can say "snow is white" and a German can say "schnee ist weiss". These are said within the object language

The metalanguage is where words are defined, in that "white" is part of the definition of "snow", "white" means "weiss" and "snow" means "schnee"

Therefore, we can replace "snow is white" is true iff s by "snow is white" is true iff "white" is part of the definition of "snow", "white" means "weiss" and "snow means "schnee"

Therefore s = the linguistic declaration that "white" is part of the definition of "snow", "white" means "weiss" and "snow" means "schnee". — RussellA

Just wondering if you saw this ...

Yeah, I replied to it here.

The flow is a dog's breakfast after mod intervention.

I started a thread specifically on the logic of truth, with the aim, amongst other things, sorting out the various problems with the place of T-sentences by going over Tarski, Kripke and so on from a logical perspective. Seems it's not allowed. So now the post to which @RussellA was replying is lost in a closed thread, without much explanation. Exasperating.

I don't know what to say. It's as if the mods want to actively discourage looking at specifics in detail. A forced march to mediocrity.

Yes. Logic is a seperate topic to metaphysics and epistemology. What is discussed there is in effect the grammar of the topic, the ways on which we can put sentences together coherently.

There are a number of different ways of treating truth, that have ben expounded in logical terms. These relate to, but differ from,how we know something is true, the topic of epistemology, and the the sort of things that are true, the topic of metaphysics — Banno

Thanks Bano.
I still question if the difference is practical.

Everything in philosophy should be about the process of unveiling the Truth or Being.
Every philosophy topic, in my mind, is a branch of epistemology.
Eg metaphysics is "How to know which sorts of things are true".
Ethics: How to know right from wrong.
Logic: The mechanics behind arriving at knowledge.
I can also view everything as branches of logic.
The logic of metaphysics. The logic of ethics, etc.

We are trying to organise things so that the truth is not obscured by messiness.

Truth is simply a property of propositions: If a proposition describes reality, it is true and if it does not, it is false. This is, I believe, the correspondence theory of truth.

However, what about mathematical truths? There is nothing (in reality) that corresponds to $\infty$. Oui, mes amies?

I still question if the difference is practical. — Yohan

Practical at the least in division of labour.

It doesn't need to be "the mind-independent material world" and cohering with "some specified set of sentences" is not enough; simply being in accordance with what is experienced will do. — Janus

I was just pointing out that the T-schema is rather empty as-is. Tarski didn't even offer it as a definition of truth:

Thus, if the definition of truth is to conform to our conception, it must imply the following equivalence:

The sentence "snow is white" is true if, and only if, snow is white.

Note that he's not saying that "p" is true iff p is the definition of truth, he's saying that it's something that must be implied by the definition of truth. His actual definition was later:

Hence we arrive at a definition of truth and falsehood simply by saying that a sentence is true if it is satisfied by all objects, and false otherwise.

But as Goodman suggests, any number of theories on truth can imply the T-schema.

So can you set out, succinctly, why they are wrong? — Banno

There's a few things that I get stuck on in thinking through this, but I think the most succinct one is this:

Taking meaning as primary, as you note, I think the most succinct refutation is simply "That's not what truth means" -- which others have pointed out, I believe, in this discussion, but then the mistake is going on to try and say too much, which opens the theory to refutation.

But I agree with you and others who have pointed out that said refutation depends upon a sort of pre-reflective understanding of truth. I'm not so sure I'd say unanalysable, either, but it's definitely one of those primitives that can't be rendered so easily as the traditional theories of truth attempt to.

I guess I had more thoughts:

I agree with the notion of the ethical-boundary of truth that's been floated: Since there's no Grand True Unifying Theory of Truth, though the disquotational theory is a good approximation, I ask -- what have I been doing? Surely I understand truth in this pre-theoretic way, as everyone who tells a truth does, but is there a post-theoretic way to understand truth as its being used? (descriptive of the prescriptive, maybe)

And the game of truth-telling, as @unenlightened pointed out, is a good place to start. That's how we'd come to justify what I said above and get at a feel for the meaning of "is true"

And there, I think the main thing that disquotational theories miss is the Big Truth type true. People do in fact mean big-T truth frequently enough that the theory misses out on that meaning. And perhaps we could say, well, that's not the meaning of the philosophers. But it is a meaning that philosophy-types and those so attracted tend to care about, so it's worth mentioning.

Disquotationalism sets out how small-t truth works -- but it doesn't tell us what it means. The game of truth-telling does that.

Surely I understand truth in this pre-theoretic way, as everyone who tells a truth does, but is there a post-theoretic way to understand truth as its being used? — Moliere

Like I said earlier, truth is best described in terms of honesty. And as such, it is quite simple. Use words to express what you honestly believe, to the best of your ability, and you are telling the truth. So if we want to understand the nature of truth we need to inquire into the nature of honesty.

For example: sworn testimony is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If this is true, then how could truth be anything other than this?

A careful unpacking of the notion of truth is what is needed. Part of that would be an unpacking of making statements.

First cab off the rank is that statements don't have a fixed meaning. See Davidson's A nice derangement of epitaphs. There seems to be no way to construct a coherent account of meaning as a convention that will work in every case. No set of rules will be able to capture the whole of meaning, because as soon as such rules are stipulated, some wag will undermine them

Next cab: we might do well to look to what happens in a conversation. There's an interplay between the protagonists, during which the way terms are used is sometimes fixed, sometimes changed, and usually results in some action. One way of viewing meaning is as the interplay and the resulting use. Wittgenstein.

Next cab: while we can't set out rules for every case, we can describe and analyse patterns in what we do. Always with the qualification that we can construct exceptions.

So we can note the separation of the illocutionary force of a sentence from its propositional content. "Jack went to the shop."
"Jack went to the shop!"
"Jack went to the shop?"

and so on. Austin and Searle and many others.

Next cab: We can also analyses the content of the sentence using the grammar developed in logic, and in doing so we can display its structure. Again, subject to exceptions.

Here we can make use of first order predicate logic to set out the consistency or lack there of in the utterance. Frege, Russell, and so on.

Last cab: there are are this level of the logic of the content of the statement, a few theories about the nature of truth. These deal only with truth in relation to the content, but then the content informs the illocutionary force, and what is done in making an utterance. Even the breach of a convention can only occur if there is a convention.

So yes, there are uses of "truth" that rely on the force of an utterance. There are uses of "truth" that rely on the breach of convention. There are Big Picture uses.

I propose that we might gain a better understanding of these Big Picture uses were we to have a clear grasp of the logic of truth. Tarski, Kripke, and such.

And for my money disquaotation presents that logic. At the least, understanding the logic of truth will underpin any other considerations.

But philosophy is hard, and is found in the detail rather than the trite and trivial.

we might do well to look to what happens in a conversation — Banno

And it is a continuing mystery that you haven't read Grice.

For what it's worth, I think it would be a mistake to ignore @Metaphysician Undercover's point about the connection between honesty and truth. I don't think it's so easy to say which concept is parasitic on the other.

True, trust and tree have the same root: "be firm, solid, steadfast"

It's in the illocutionary force isn't it?

What I was thinking was roughly this: it's easy enough to see how you would define being honest as aiming at truth, so truth has priority.

But words are a bit like colors: they are defined, as it were, "in standard conditions," which is to say, spoken candidly. Without the baseline of candid use, words cannot have meaning. (Don't make more of the word "defined" than is meant.)

Lewis landed there too, and argued that a speech community requires a foundation of truthfulness and trust (taking speech overwhelmingly as candid).

In which case honesty is prior.

Note that we don't want a string of words to correspond to cat-on-the-mat-ness. — Pie

Who don't? I think they do. I think they're wrong. But not obviously wrong. And they obviously do.

For me, the words on the right of "iff" in '"Snow is white" is true iff snow is white' point to the grounding fact of snow being white (or not). — Janus

See, @Pie and @Banno? It's not hard not to equivocate, if you don't want to:



If you don't want to. But mysticism is a hard drug.

The thing on the right is a fact. — Banno

No, the thing on the right of the T-schema is a string of words.

The meaning of 'P' is P. — Pie

Yes, the denotation of a sentence adjoined to quotation marks is the string of words itself.

If 'P' is true, then P is the case, — Pie

But if P is the case, then P.

and P is a piece of the world. — Pie

What is, exactly? A state of affairs corresponding to the string of words? Why not say so, like @Janus? Why the desperate urge to confuse it with the string of words? Do you feel clever when people can't follow your drift?

I'll take that point, but make anther. Trust - and honesty - stand in much the same relation to all our utterances, not just to statements. Even dishonesty only works against a background of honesty. So what we have here is not peculiar to truth per se. Indeed the very act of understanding someone is underpinned by a charitable expectation of honesty.

But our topic here is truth.

The thing on the right is a fact.
— Banno

No, the thing on the right of the T-schema is a string of words. — bongo fury

A piece of metal is a knife.

The string of words is a fact.

It's not that case that there is only one way to talk about the metal, the knife, the string or the fact.

For me, the words on the right of "iff" in '"Snow is white" is true iff snow is white' point to the grounding fact of snow being white (or not).
— Janus

See, Pie and @Banno? It's not hard not to equivocate, if you don't want to: — bongo fury

And as soon as one asks what a fact is, or what it is to point, the equivocation resumes.

At some stage you have to stop asking and just act. Snow is white. That's a fact.

And as soon as one asks what a fact is, or what it is to point, the equivocation resumes. — Banno

Only for the mystic, addicted to systematic equivocation.

Snow is white. That's a fact. — Banno

"Snow is white" is a sentence, and we point the word "true" at it iff we point the word "white" at snow.

"Fact" is ambiguous between true sentence and more occult alleged entities.

Could we all just drop "state of affairs" and "proposition"? Serious suggestion. Because even the former ends up standing for "sentence". At least with those perhaps disavowing correspondence but prone to having it both ways.

Oh, and "fact", as well. — bongo fury

or what it is to point — Banno

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/350131

Word and object have no inherent connection, but only a mystic confuses the two.

"Snow is white" is a sentence... — bongo fury

Yeah, but that snow is white is a fact.

snow is white - fact
"snow is white" - sentence
"snow is white" is true - fact
'"snow is white" is true' - sentence.

Think I mentioned this previously.

And as soon as one asks what a fact is, or what it is to point, the equivocation resumes.
— Banno

Only for the mystic, addicted to systematic equivocation. — bongo fury

But a wise fellow once said, concerning pointing,

But there just is no fact of the matter whether a word or picture is pointed at one thing or another. No physical bolt of energy flows from pointer to pointee(s). So the whole social game is one of pretence. Albeit of course a powerful one. — bongo fury