I might also be neither right nor not...

Unlike redundancy theories, however, the prosentential theory does not take the truth predicate to be always eliminable without loss. What would be lost in (11′) is Mary’s acknowledgment that Bill had said something. — IEP

And that Mary agrees. And you have at least two speakers to deal with if you don't.

So

truth a property of sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other), — Pie

reduces further to a property of utterances. E.g.



Language (and even logic) as opinion polling. Which gets my vote, although it can sound daft. As can coherence theory in general, after all.

Don't fall to the idealist error of thinking truth is dependent on you. Down that path lies solipsism.

It could still rain without you noticing. — Banno

It could rain without anyone noticing it, but there would be no proposition without someone to produce it. And truth is of the proposition. Therefore no truth without someone noticing something.

Yes, I made a similar point at the very start of this discussion. And here which includes a translation into ordinary English.

No, I don't think I was saying anything like that, just offering motivation.

(Snipping lots of musing about "It's raining or it's not", which was more fun to write than to read.)

I'll stand by my two suggestions:
(1) it's reasonable to say disjunctions are made true by one their disjuncts being true;
(2) correspondence can naturally be taken as applying only to informative claims, so tautologies need not apply.

I don't think the mere existence of disjunctions or conditionals falsifies correspondence theories. (Seems like we would have heard about that if it were so.)

But it was gibberish both times.

2. T(q) → ∃x(x=q) — Michael

That's not how that works. You don't need existential generalization to know that q exists; you just predicated something of q!

You're trying to say that if something has a property then it must exist. But the assertion that something has a property presupposes that it exists. Asserting that it doesn't have some property would work just as well.

You don't "find out" that the individuals in your universe, like q, exist; you assumed them when you built it, or you name them (uniquely!) when you create them, as with existential instantiation.

That doesn’t make it gibberish, it makes it trivial, much like p → p.

The pertinent point is that given the premise ∀p: T(q) ↔ p, the conclusion ∀p: ∃x(x=q) follows, which suggests either that the world is exhausted by our descriptions of it or that expression-independent propositions exist.

The simple resolution is to specify the T-schema as saying that for all propositions that p, the proposition that p is true iff p.

Hodge-podgy reply

Okay. That's the conventional view when it comes to belief as propositional attitude. I agree that propositional content is necessarily linguistic, but I see no reason to agree that all our belief amounts to an attitude towards a proposition which represents that belief such that we take the proposition to be true.

For example, if one believes that a sheet is a sheep(a common cottage industry Gettier example), they do not have an attitude towards the proposition "a sheet is a sheep" such that they take it to be true, but they most certainly believe that that sheet is a sheep. — creativesoul

Also @Luke, from the exchange about named entities being true.

I think I'd say the above is not a belief, but a belief-mediated perception. We see the sheet-as-sheep. We might hold beliefs about sheet-as-sheep -- but note how this strays from logic, and is clearly phenomenology, complete with dashy-portmanteaus :D

Maybe unpalatable to some, but to answer:

How could a language less creature believe that a mouse is behind a tree if it has no linguistic concepts? — creativesoul

I'd say perception is linguistically mediated in us, but that perception simpliciter, in all species, does not require language. When we talk of beliefs in animals we're speaking in folk psychology. We understand the animals, being animals ourselves, and we're speaking of their psychological states through the folk concept of "belief" -- and I say "folk" non-pejoratively, because I think the folk concept of belief -- and truth, for that matter -- is actually better than a lot of philosopher or scientific inventions. Just not as precise as philosophers or scientists like, as @Sam26 said, since they really really like being right about things in lots of circumstances, when folk-notions simply don't work that way.

Also feel like noting that all of us have already undergone that transition, having started without language but then, through exposure to the language-using social world, we learned it through our social practices. (and hasn't anyone noticed how dogs, and our fellow apes, learn bits of language with training? That is, if the Lion spoke to me, I'd know what the Lion said -- at least as I think of things)

If the existence of a river accounts for the truth of a proposition (e.g. “this river contains many fish”), then it is a fact.

Just as the existence of snow accounts for the truth of “snow is white”.

Is a river an individual? If the existence of a river makes a proposition true or accounts for the truth of a proposition, then it is a fact - at least, according to one view of facts. — Luke

I think the best way to define the "mention operator" as I called it, and had yet to be able to answer your question, is to say what it does is it converts a natural-language string into a name for that said string using the same alphanumeric characters, but changing its function from a proposition to a name.

One thing I'm noticing here, in your examples, is you like to treat existence like a predicate. So the existence of things gives propositions used their truth-value.

"This river contains many fish" is true iff there exists a river, and the river contains, and the object contained by the river are fish, and the relationship of said fish to the numerical predicates in the context its within is such that speakers would say "many".

You agree with this:

So non-existent rivers are not facts? I might agree with you there. — Luke

On your account of correspondence, how is it that "There is no river on this dusty plane" true? The fact is the dusty plane, rather than the no-river. But the proposition is about the no-river. Or, the classic "The present king of France is bald". There is nothing to which this proposition refers as we speak it today. So you'd likely say something like the proposition is either obviously false, given there is no fact to the matter, or does not have a truth-value, or something like that. But that's something I liked about the plums example -- here was something that would matter, and is a lot more natural to our way of thinking. When you open up the fridge and see nothing in it, the no-plums have an effect on your state, at least. The nothing has an effect on us. And especially the no-plums, if we wanted plums. The no-plums have a relationship to the believed proposition. The fact is the empty fridge, and yet the sentence is "There aren't any plums in the ice box", and it's true. (or, perhaps you could say the fact is the imagined plums, but then we'd have facts-about-imaginations which doesn't work quite the same as facts-in-the-world, hence our confusions)

Given that true propositions about what is not there are many, and we are saying that truth is correspondence to facts, there must be non-entities to which said propositions correspond to -- unless you have some kind of translation you always perform on statements which use names referencing nothing, like "When non-referring names are used, the right-hand side of the T-sentence will be translated into names which refer to be understood" -- something I'd say looks ad hoc, on its face, though perhaps there's another motivation to speak like this.

That depends on whether you count it raining and not raining at different times at the same place or at different places at the same time as counterexamples to "it's raining or it's not raining". It's a matter of interpretation; is its both raining and not raining a counter-example under your interpretation? If not, then what do you take the formula to mean? — Janus

And here I am again at a loss to say what that correspondence amounts to. "it is raining or it is not raining" does not seem to mean "anywhere". — Banno

It corresponds to the fact that it is always either raining or not raining at any place and time; shortening that to just "anywhere" which says nothing about time or raining is misleading. — Janus

Another thought in the back of my mind, though to develop it more I'll have to look at temporal logics now --

But this exchange reminds me of Kant's distinction between logic as such, and transcendental logic -- the primary difference being one abstracts from spatio-temporal relations, and the other does not. If you'll allow the indulgence, I believe it goes back to Aristotle's definition of non-contradiction which you are mirroring here, @Janus --

link

“It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect” (with the appropriate qualifications) (Metaph IV 3 1005b19–20). — Aristotle in the SEP on Logic

Still, worth highlighting that the relationship between time and logic is thorny. In a sense logic should be timeless. Yet we live in time. What to do with that?

I think I'd say the above is not a belief, but a belief-mediated perception. We see the sheet-as-sheep. We might hold beliefs about sheet-as-sheep -- but note how this strays from logic, and is clearly phenomenology, — Moliere

I'd say perception is linguistically mediated in us, but that perception simpliciter, in all species, does not require language. When we talk of beliefs in animals we're speaking in folk psychology. We understand the animals, being animals ourselves, and we're speaking of their psychological states... — Moliere

This seems consistent with indirect realism, idealism, and similar frameworks which work from the same fundamental mistake. Namely, that we have no direct access to the sheet(in this case), so we're not seeing the sheet, but rather only our perception, conception, sense datum, etc. thereof. I reject that view because it is based upon invalid and/or untenable reasoning(argument from illusion, etc.).

I'm not using "belief" in the same way you are either.

So, sure... there are different ways to account for meaningful thought and belief, and you've presented, roughly, one very popular mistaken one.

We understand the animals, being animals ourselves, and we're speaking of their psychological states through the folk concept of "belief" -- and I say "folk" non-pejoratively, because I think the folk concept of belief -- and truth, for that matter -- is actually better than a lot of philosopher or scientific inventions. Just not as precise as philosophers or scientists like, as Sam26 said, since they really really like being right about things in lots of circumstances, when folk-notions simply don't work that way. — Moliere

lol
Is that what I said, that philosophers and scientists really really like being right. I cracked up when I read this. Although the latter part of that sentence, viz., everyday speech doesn't work that way, is something I would say. I think I may know where this comes from, but it's the way it's worded that I thought was really really funny.

I do think this whole notion of looking for a precise definition of truth is just a waste of time. It's like trying to find a precise definition of the concept game, or, trying to find a precise definition of pornography. There are just to many uses with too many variables. Do I know all the variations of the use of the word game? No. Do I understand what a game is when I see it, most likely. Is the word useless without a precise definition, obviously not. A vague use might just be what we need in many social interactions.

I like the notion of correspondence, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to try to come up with a theory that explains every use of truth as correspondence. I like that it generally works. Probably in most or many cases we can see what corresponds, like how a painting of Joe's farm corresponds to the arrangement of the house, the barn, the pig pen, etc., at Joe's farm. Is this how every use of the concept truth works? No. Does this mean that I don't know what truth is? No.

There are just too many lines of thought, distorted by hundreds of different uses of concepts. It's like trying to find the best move in chess, sometimes you can, but often you make the best move based on a variety of factors. Again, there are just too many variables.

Also feel like noting that all of us have already undergone that transition, having started without language but then, through exposure to the language-using social world, we learned it through our social practices. (and hasn't anyone noticed how dogs, and our fellow apes, learn bits of language with training? That is, if the Lion spoke to me, I'd know what the Lion said -- at least as I think of things) — Moliere

Indeed. If we are to have a philosophically and scientifically respectable position, the evolutionary progression of meaningful thought and belief must be sensibly accounted for. That requires a notion of meaningful belief that is simple enough that language less creatures are capable, and rich enough in potential to account for the evolution into language use(langauge creation/acquisition) all the way through to thinking about thought and belief(and language use) as a subject matter in its own right(metacognition).

Current convention is incapable of doing that because it places the initial emergence of both truth and meaning on the wrong side of language creation/acquisition, amongst a few other fatal flaws(accounting malpractices).

What is it for snow to be a constituent of the fact that snow is white? Facts have parts? — Banno

Situations, circumstances, states of affairs, and/or events all have parts.

"Snow is white" is true by definition. The more interesting cases are not.

lol
Is that what I said, that philosophers and scientists really really like being right. I cracked up when I read this. Although the latter part of that sentence, viz., everyday speech doesn't work that way, is something I would say. I think I may know where this comes from, but it's the way it's worded that I thought was really really funny. — Sam26

Well, I extrapolated, I'll admit. :D - glad to amuse, though.

I do think this whole notion of looking for a precise definition of truth is just a waste of time. It's like trying to find a precise definition of the concept game, or, trying to find a precise definition of pornography. There are just to many uses with too many variables. Do I know all the variations of the use of the word game? No. Do I understand what a game is when I see it, most likely. Is the word useless without a precise definition, obviously not. A vague use might just be what we need in many social interactions. — Sam26

I agree with this. Philosophy is useless, after all. (at least, it should be ;) ) -- one might reframe the question, then. Without a definition being able to be supplied, what could we ask of a theory of truth? What is it we're asking after in the first place? Definitions cannot be pinned down, and you and I, at least, agree that truth is the sort of thing without a precise definition -- in fact, if we were tempted to define truth based on our philosophical practices, we might say that truth morphs itself with context -- that which theory we use is context-dependent. Or, if we're error-theorists, then we'd just say there is no such thing as truth itself, and its more like a character in a story about our sentences.

I like the notion of correspondence, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to try to come up with a theory that explains every use of truth as correspondence. I like that it generally works. Probably in most or many cases we can see what corresponds, like how a painting of Joe's farm corresponds to the arrangement of the house, the barn, the pig pen, etc., at Joe's farm. Is this how every use of the concept truth works? No. Does this mean that I don't know what truth is? No.

There are just too many lines of thought, distorted by hundreds of different uses of concepts. It's like trying to find the best move in chess, sometimes you can, but often you make the best move based on a variety of factors. Again, there are just too many variables. — Sam26

This is interesting, and takes my mind in yet another direction -- another possibility, or fair inference from what we've said so far about truth, is that it's simply not definable nor morphable. In some sense we might say that truth is transcendental to all conversation, in the sense that it is the necessary belief for all statement-making speech to be possible at all. In which case it's a bit like defining the noumena -- it's a place-holder in conversation for something bigger than what we can comprehend.

This seems consistent with indirect realism, idealism, and similar frameworks which work from the same fundamental mistake. Namely, that we have no direct access to the sheet(in this case), so we're not seeing the sheet, but rather only our perception, conception, sense datum, etc. thereof. I reject that view because it is based upon invalid and/or untenable reasoning(argument from illusion, etc.). — creativesoul

Well, hold on a second there. Suppose the case of seeing the sheet-as-sheet. Then we'd have direct access to the sheet. It's just that it is also possible for us to see what we have direct access to as something else we have direct access to. (whatever "direct" is doing now... without indirect-realism/idealism to define "direct", it seems superfluous)

"as" is a linguistic expression of a phenomology of perceiving entities as particular entities. So with the usual Gestalt phenomena we'd say that we see the ink-as-old-woman or the ink-as-young-woman, or the ink-as-duck or ink-as-rabbit. That is, the question of "access" or realism/anti-realism is set aside for now.

What that would mean is that individual perception is not some means for seeing knowledge, or something. But I'm fine with that. Knowledge is socially created and accepted before a community of knowledge-producers, rather than epistemic Robinson Crusoe's seeing authentic truths that they write down.

I agree with this. Philosophy is useless, after all. — Moliere

Philosophy isn't useless, that's not what I'm saying, some philosophy maybe useless, but to lump it all together as useless is to not understand the nature of philosophy. For example, you're putting forth a philosophy when you respond to what's been said. If you have a set of beliefs about life, science, morality, truth, etc., and you're using reasoning to explain your arguments, then you're doing philosophy. It's just a matter of doing philosophy well, using well reasoned or well grounded arguments. Everyone does philosophy in some sense. Especially if you think about life.

"Snow is white" is true by definition. — creativesoul

This has been said more than once.

It's not right.

The definition of snow is frozen atmospheric water vapour. Colour is irrelevant.

Heh, I suppose I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek. In that sense, yes, philosophy is clearly useful, but useful-for. When I say philosophy is useless, I actually want it to be useless. It only sounds harsh because we equate use-ability with value. But there is so much more to value than useful things.

Basically that philosophy is useless is a feature, to me, rather than a bug. Though I agree, if pressed, that the kind of philosophy which deals with one's particular life circumstances and feelings -- the stuff that the general philosophy often attempts to grasp in a more general way -- is useful-for, but it's only useful-for-me. The useless stuff attempts -- and seems to fail -- at a more general aim.

So the uselessness of the dialogue on truth isn't something that counts against it, in my opinion. It's a wonderful waste of time (and then, once in a blue moon, someone is clever enough to turn a waste of time into something useful)

,

The point, so far as there was one, to this discussion is to find a grammar for our notion of truth that holds together in a more or less consistent way.

The core of that consistent grammar is, roughly:

• Truth is different to belief, justification, agreement, and so on.
• Truth ranges over propositions and such.
• "p" is true IFF p, where p is the meaning of "p".

Yes, I'll not pursue that thread further in this thread. Good point.

On topic: I think that you and I agree on those three things, thus far.

Truth ranges over propositions and such. — Banno

Is hitting the target a property of the arrow?

Yeah, Who was it said that? It might be an interesting discussion. But can you fill it out? Presumably with the proposition in the place of the arrow, and truth in the place of the target, and...

...and yes, it is the purpose of an arrow to hit the target, as of the proposition to hit the truth.

Hence I avoided "Truth is a property of propositions and such".

And of course, as for all language, we can add the general deranged epitaphs clause that one might set up a proposition that deliberately is false, as one might shoot to miss.

The point, so far as there was one, to this discussion is to find a grammar for our notion of truth that holds together in a more or less consistent way. — Banno

That's basically what I've been saying, but in terms of use within our forms of life. So, I think the best way to look at the concept truth is in a Wittgensteinian way, i.e., via the PI and OC.

The core of that consistent grammar is, roughly:
Truth is different to belief, justification, agreement, and so on.
Truth ranges over propositions and such.
"p" is true IFF p, where p is the meaning of "p". — Banno

I'm not inclined to separate true and false from belief. What we believe to be true and/or false is where these concepts get their life. Moreover, why would we need another meta-language to explain what we mean in our everyday language? And, how many other meta-languages do we need to explain our other concepts? I find this problematic to say the least. In other words, to explain "p" is true IFF p you have to go back to our everyday speech (give e.g's), otherwise it has no meaning apart from our everyday uses. I don't believe "p" is true IFF p adds anything significant to the discussion of truth, if anything at all.

I'm not inclined to separate true and false from belief. — Sam26

Nor am I. To be sure, to believe that p is to believe that p is true. They are not unrelated, but they are different, and have differing uses in both language and form of life.

And the difference can be best seen in that truth ranges over propositions, while belief relates a proposition to a person. The one is unary; the other, binary.

Why would we need another meta-language to explain what we mean in our everyday language. — Sam26

I don't see that we do. Our everyday language permits us to talk about our language, and so is it's own metalanguage. The various logical systems are part of our everyday language, not seperate from it.

The T-sentence, and especially the discussions around it, set out the relation between truth and meaning, set the syntax for that form of life.

Put it this way: are you willing to deny the T-sentence? If not, it gives a point of agreement, If so, it gives a point of departure.

And the difference can be best seen in that truth ranges over propositions, while belief relates a proposition to a person. — Banno

Let's stay with this for a moment.

I don't see how a proposition that's true, has meaning apart from what one believes to be true. What I'm saying is that it doesn't seem to make sense to separate propositional truth from beliefs. It's as if true propositions exist in some metaphysical reality, apart from beliefs. I'm assuming that what you mean by "truth ranging over propositions," is that propositional truth can stand on it's own apart from belief. What does it mean for a proposition to be true apart from someone's belief that it's true?

"p" is true IFF p, where p is the meaning of "p". — Banno

This is very problematic. Do you mean, 'where p is what is believed to be the meaning of "p"'? That would just make truth belief. Or what exactly do you mean by "the meaning of 'p'"? Since it appears to be very important to the truth or falsity of "p", according to your scheme, maybe you could give us some guidance as to how to determine the meaning of "p".

Let's stay with this for a moment. — Sam26

Good idea. A bit of depth.

We can perhaps see the difference most clearly if we look to the use of each rather than meaning. Let's look at an example in which it might make sense to separate truth from belief.

There's a tree over the road. Suppose Fred believes the tree is an English Oak. But it is a Cork Oak.

We might write, in order to show the bivalency of the belief:

Believes ( Fred, The tree over the road is an English Oak)
And
True (The tree over the road is a Cork Oak).

It's as if true propositions exist in some metaphysical reality, apart from beliefs. — Sam26

How? I don't see anything like that.

I'm assuming that what you mean by "truth ranging over propositions," is that propositional truth can stand on it's own apart from belief. — Sam26

If you are asking if there are truths that no one believes, then I think a few considerations will show that this is so. Antirealists may well argue otherwise, and sometimes I would agree, It depends on context. That's the topic in another thread.

What does it mean for a proposition to be true apart from someone's belief that it's true? — Sam26

I hope it is apparent that we seperate truth from belief in those language games around error, mistakes, lies, and so on.

An additional comment, From Searle, to ward off a common error. While "Believes ( Fred, The tree over the road is an English Oak)" has the syntax of a relationship, "The tree over the road is an English Oak" is better thought of as the content of Fred's belief, not a relation between a proposition and Fred. Not marking this distinction adequately is what, I regret, led to @creativesoul's present confusion.

We can perhaps see the difference most clearly if we look to the use of each rather than meaning. Let's look at an example in which it might make sense to separate truth from belief.

There's a tree over the road. Suppose Fred believes the tree is an English Oak. But it is a Cork Oak.

We might write, in order to show the bivalency of the belief:

Believes ( Fred, The tree over the road is an English Oak)
And
True (The tree over the road is a Cork Oak). — Banno

"There's an English Oak over the road." This is Fred's belief. So, instead of it being the English Oak, it's a Cork Oak. So, Fred's belief is false, it doesn't match the facts. So, Fred believes one thing, but the fact is, "The tree over the road is a Cork Oak." It's not, as I see it, a difference between a belief and true, it's a difference between what he believes is true, and the fact of the matter, viz., "The tree over the road is a Cork Oak."

I don't' think your explanation is clear at all. It seems confusing to me. Okay, let's drill further down on this part.

2. T(q) → ∃x(x=q) — Michael

Again, this is ill-formed, mixing predicate and propositional terms with abandon.

But if we try to get to the sprite of the argument, you might validly infer, from "q is true", that something is true; T(q)⊃∃(x)T(x).

That is arguably an instance of existential introduction.

But you can't get to "q exists". That'd be an instance of the existential fallacy. That a set has a particular attribute does not imply that the set has members.

I don't' think this is clear at all. It seems confusing to me. Okay, let's drill further down on this part. — Sam26

Puzzling.

"There's an English Oak over the road." This is Fred's belief. So, instead of it being the English Oak, it's a Cork Oak. So, Fred's belief is false, — Sam26

What's unclear about that?