The tree is outside of language, perception, and belief is it not? — creativesoul

The tree we are talking about is outside of language?

I don't understand that.

Things such as the tree being, say, 11m tall, will be true regardless of their being stated.

One issue here is what a "linguistic fact" is, so that we can understand what a "nonlinguistic fact" is.

It seems to me that it doesn't make sense to say that (1) is a linguistic fact. If someone thingks it does, then it is up tot hem to provide some account. — Banno

I'm not defending that use of "linguistic fact" or "non-linguistic" fact.

All kettles were, are, and will forever remain to be, existentially dependent upon language. If they were planned originals, then all meaningful marks involving kettles emerged in the planning and fabrication of the first kettles, as well as accounting practices of kettles thereafter. If they were accidental originals having resulted from ingenious on the spot novelty of use, then all meaningful marks involving kettles emerged after the original kettle.

Statements involving kettles. Situations involving kettles. Circumstances involving kettles. Belief involving kettles. Knowledge involving kettles. Everything involving kettles came immediately prior to, during, and/or after the first kettle emerged into the world.

All facts involving kettles are existentially dependent upon language.

The tree we are talking about is outside of language? — Banno

We may be talking about different trees. The one in my front yard is most certainly outside of language.

The term "tree" consists of meaningful marks. The term "tree" is not outside of language. What I'm picking out of the world to the exclusion of all else by using that term most certainly is.

Some facts involving trees are existentially dependent upon language. All statements about trees are.

Things such as the tree being, say, 11m tall, will be true regardless of their being stated. — Banno

Only after we first stipulated what counted as eleven meters. Not before. The fact that the tree is eleven meters tall is existentially dependent upon language. The fact that the mouse is behind the tree is not.

There is, as a kind of ground to all our propositions, truths and facts, a pre-linguistic actuality to which they must submit. Analysis and conceptualization cannot gain purchase on that actuality, because to do so is to bring it into the linguistic domain, and there all we have purchase on is our communal perceptions and conceptions of what is the case, — Janus

The "pre-linguistic actuality" I have in mind is our basic experience of images, smells, sensations and impressions as well as recognition of repetition and pattern. — Janus

In the bottom quote above you are doing what you said we could not do in the top quote. In addition, we've also arrived at incoherency/self-contradiction by virtue of equivocating the notion of "pre-linguistic actuality". The top quote sets it out one way. The bottom another.

It is very hard to talk about the subject matter at hand when we do not avoid such results and/or situations. I think we can nix the notion of "pre-linguistic actuality" altogether and by doing so, increase clarity while losing nothing. While "pre-linguistic" seems potentially useful, "actuality" does not.

I think we agree that a cat's belief that a mouse is under the sofa includes a mouse, the sofa, and a spatiotemporal relationship between the two from the cat's vantage point... right?

One consideration worth mentioning...

An overlap happens between language less creatures' belief and belief of language users. The overlap could be rendered as a Venn diagram with the commonalities being directly perceptible things. Trees, sofas, stoves, fridges, mice, and spatiotemporal relationships, for instance, are directly perceptible things within the aforementioned overlap. This overlap could be talked about in terms of the world shared between cats, mice, and humans.

In the bottom quote above you are doing what you said we could not do in the top quote. — creativesoul

No, I'm not; I'm just saying what we all know; that we know, in the most basic sense, pre-linguistic sensory experience, which our language cannot capture without losing its living quality and distorting it into a world of fixed entities and facts; which, in other words our language cannot adequately capture even though it can express linguistic truths and falsities which pertain to that collective representational schema we call the world.

To say otherwise would be to claim that animals do not experience anything at all.

1. Joe Biden

(1) isn't the President. (1) is a name. Joe Biden is the President.

Again, this is the use-mention distinction.

Remember this?

1. The kettle is boiling
2. (1) is true

The correct translation of (2) is "the kettle is boiling" is true.

So:

1. The kettle is boiling
2. (1) is the fact that the kettle is boiling

The correct translation of (2) is "the kettle is boiling" is the fact that the kettle is boiling. This is false. Just as "Joe Biden" is the President is false.

That the kettle is boiling is the fact that the kettle is boiling.

We can explain Tarski's view as follows: There are two modes of speech, an objectual mode and a linguistic mode ('material' mode, in Medieval terminology). The correspondence idea can be expressed in both modes. It is expressed by:

'Snow is white' is true iff snow is white

as well as by:

' "Snow is white" is true' is equivalent to 'Snow is white.' — Andrew M

I don't know if Blackwell got this right. In Truth and Proof (1969) Tarski said this:

A radical solution of the problem which may readily occur to us would be simply to remove the word “true” from the English vocabulary or at least to abstain from using it in any serious discussion.

Those people to whom such an amputation of English seems highly unsatisfactory and illegitimate may be inclined to accept a somewhat more compromising solution, which consists in adopting what could be called (following the contemporary Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbinski) ´ “the nihilistic approach to the theory of truth”. According to this approach, the word “true” has no independent meaning but can be used as a component of the two meaningful expressions “it is true that” and “it is not true that”. These expressions are thus treated as if they were single words with no organic parts. The meaning ascribed to them is such that they can be immediately eliminated from any sentence in which they occur. For instance, instead of saying
it is true that all cats are black
we can simply say
all cats are black,
and instead of
it is not true that all cats are black
we can say
not all cats are black.

In other contexts the word “true” is meaningless. In particular, it cannot be used as a real predicate qualifying names of sentences. Employing the terminology of medieval logic, we can say that the word “true” can be used syncategorematically in some special situations, but it cannot ever be used categorematically.

To realize the implications of this approach, consider the sentence which was the starting point for the antinomy of the liar; that is, the sentence printed in red on page 65 in this magazine. From the “nihilistic” point of view it is not a meaningful sentence, and the antinomy simply vanishes. Unfortunately, many uses of the word “true”, which otherwise seem quite legitimate and reasonable, are similarly affected by this approach. Imagine, for instance, that a certain term occurring repeatedly in the works [[67]] of an ancient mathematician admits of several interpretations. A historian of science who studies the works arrives at the conclusion that under one of these interpretations all the theorems stated by the mathematician prove to be true; this leads him naturally to the conjecture that the same will apply to any work of this mathematician that is not known at present but may be discovered in the future. If, however, the historian of science shares the “nihilistic” approach to the notion of truth, he lacks the possibility of expressing his conjecture in words. One could say that truth-theoretical “nihilism” pays lip service to some popular forms of human speech, while actually removing the notion of truth from the conceptual stock of the human mind.

So he seems quite opposed to the redundancy view.

1. The kettle is boiling

(1) isn't the fact. (1) is a sentence. The fact is that the kettle is boiling. — Michael

But you said that was a sentence...

What is so hard to understand about this?

1. Joe Biden

(1) is a name and Joe Biden is a man.

Use-mention. It's really simple.

1. Joe Biden

(1) is a sentence and Joe Biden is a man.

Use-mention. It's really simple. — Michael

Sure. Quite agree.

And similarly:

1. The kettle is boiling

(1) is a sentence and that the kettle is boiling is a fact.

No.

1'. "The kettle is boiling"

(1') is a sentence.

1. The kettle is boiling
2. "The kettle is boiling"

(1) is a sentence, (2) is a quote.

Why do you treat these differently?

1. Joe Biden
2. The kettle is boiling

(1) is a name and (2) is a sentence. (1) isn't Joe Biden and (2) isn't the fact that the kettle is boiling.

Going around in circles isn't helping at all.

Going around in circles isn't helping at all. — Banno

This thread keeps circling back because Banno's dishonesty drags it down. And so it never gets anywhere. We can never progress in a discussion about truth when dishonesty interferes.

If a bowl is existentially dependent upon language(and they are) and the content of the cat's belief includes the bowl(and it does) then that particular belief is existentially dependent upon language, and there's no way around it. — creativesoul

You seem to be suggesting that you can't create a bowl without a language. I'm sure that pre-linguistic man created bowls of some sort, or maybe you're referring to a particular kind of bowl, say plastic bowls. Even if you're right, it seems like a stretch to the conclude that because a thing (maybe stove is more appropriate), is created by language users, that the cat's belief is dependent upon language. When I use the phrase "dependent upon language," I'm referring to the use of concepts as part of a statement of belief. So, the cat is not dependent upon language in this sense. You're adding another sense of "dependent upon language" that doesn't involve the direct use of concepts, which seems to be an indirect dependence. Am I understanding your point, or not? Mostly I'm talking about concepts, in particular the concept truth. The difference maybe in our focus.

Per the RHS sentence, we can either use it (to express something about the world) or mention it (in order to express something about the sentence itself). The following passage explains Tarski's view on this (bold mine). — Andrew M

Makes sense, cheers. Question though. The source uses the word "correspondence" in the context of mapping expressions of language and concerned objects, is that meant as fleshing out a correspondence theory, or is it meant in an informal sense of "an explanatory relation of equivalence"

The part following "that" is a proposition. — Tate

I'm not sure about that. There is the fact that snow is white and there is the proposition that snow is white. Are these the same thing? I'm inclined to say that the proposition is the truth-bearer and the fact the truth-maker.

@Michael

You just need to stipulate what you want the terms to mean. There's too much controversy surrounding it to assume your audience will know what you mean.

"What might a fact be? Three popular views about the nature of facts can be distinguished:

"A fact is just a true truth-bearer,
A fact is just an obtaining state of affairs,
A fact is just a sui generis type of entity in which objects exemplify properties or stand in relations.
In order to understand these claims and the relations between them it is necessary to appeal to some accounts of truth, truth-bearers, states of affairs, obtaining, objects, properties, relations and exemplification. Propositions are a popular candidate for the role of what is true or false. One view of propositions has it that these are composed exclusively of concepts, individual concepts (for example, the concept associated with the proper name “Sam”), general concepts (the concept expressed by the predicates “is sad” and “est triste”) and formal concepts (for example, the concept expressed by “or”). Concepts so understood are things we can understand. Properties and relations, we may then say, are not concepts, for they are not the sort of thing we understand. Properties are exemplified by objects and objects fall under concepts. Similarly, objects stand in relations but fall under relational concepts.". -SEP article on facts

The article goes into the meaning of "obtains" which is also controversial.

Objects can have names. The name of an object is a linguistic object, which can be used as a representative, a stand-in, for the object (which may or may not be itself linguistic) in linguistic contexts. If you build a small model of your neighborhood, the model of the house in which you live is not a name for your house, though it functions in this context similarly to how a name functions in a linguistic context.

To say something of the state or circumstances of an object, we need more than just names of objects in our language, just as to show the color of your house, you paint the model the same color, to show its doors and windows, you make small versions of those in the, ahem, corresponding places on the model, and to show where your house is in relation to streets, trees, and other houses, you place models of those in the appropriate places.

How we do that in language is controversial. We could say -- in some sense, following Plato -- that there are also objects that are properties of objects, and these sorts of objects can also have names, and so we can conjoin the name of an object and the name of a property, perhaps in a special way, to show that the object has that property, to say that it does. You paint the model of your house blue to show that your house is blue; you say "My house is blue" to show, in language, that it is blue, to model in language its state of possessing the property of being blue.

There are objections to treating properties as themselves objects, objections very important to some philosophers. Does it make any difference? You could still model your house in language by saying things like "My house is blue" even without considering "blue" a name of anything. But what justifies the "is blue" part of the sentence? The presence of "my house" is justified by being a name for my house. If "blue" is not a name for anything, what justifies including it in a sentence which is part of a linguistic model of your house? If your house possesses a certain property, and a name for that property is "blue", we are justified; but if not?

At this point, for some philosophers, suspicion begins to fall on the dominant role of naming here: what we are about here is modeling things in language, and naming is a part of that, but only a part; it's not "in charge", and perhaps shouldn't even be treated as the paradigmatic case of linguistic modeling. The first question, they say, should be whether "My house is blue" is part of a linguistic model of my house, not whether "blue" is a name of anything, not even whether "my house" is a name of anything.

But what would make "My house is blue" part of a model of my house? How can we decide that? Is "My house is green" also part of such a model? Why not? What about "Joe's house is blue"? Is that also part of a model of my house? What about "Joe's car is green"?

[ Off to work. ]

Is there something mysterious about correspondence? — Michael

For whole sentences, yes, a bit.

We have a sentence "the cat is on the mat", we have the cat on the mat, and we say that the former is about or describes the latter. Is that mysterious? — Michael

Yes, a bit, as soon as we notice that parts of the sentence taken separately are about or describe the cat on the mat.

"the cat" is about or describes the cat.

"the mat" is about or describes the mat.

"is on" is about or describes the notorious pair of objects.

Does it, or perhaps the whole sentence, be about or describe a relation? That could be mysterious and controversial. My objection to it, and to any supposed truth-making correlate of a whole sentence, even e.g. of (non-relational) "snow is white", is that it misunderstands how declarative sentences work, and further obscures the matter.

Declarative sentences work by pointing a component word or word-string at one or more objects. (Picture 2.) Thinking that the whole device points at a fact or state of affairs obscures the matter by suggesting that the fact has a similar structure to a sentence, or even a similar function. Perhaps we think the sentence is pointing at a pointing. Who knows what half-baked notions fly around, infecting believers and skeptics of correspondence alike.

But what would make "My house is blue" part of a model of my house? How can we decide that? Is "My house is green" also part of such a model? Why not? What about "Joe's house is blue"? Is that also part of a model of my house? What about "Joe's car is green"? — Srap Tasmaner

There are two natural options here.

One is a matter of agreement, among the users of the linguistic model, to say "Pat's house is blue" is part of our shared model of Pat's house, or to say it isn't. But we've slipped in new problems and possibly new assumptions: what is "Pat's house is blue"? Is it an object? Does it have, or lack, the property of being part of our model of Pat's house? We can attempt to go around these questions by saying that the users of the model simply agree to say, or not say, the sentence "Pat's house is blue," without talking about the model at all. By saying or not saying a given sentence, users of a model show that the sentence is, or is not, part of their linguistic model, without actually saying that. The latter is still implied, though, and this fact makes certain sorts of sentences ridiculous or puzzling.

The other option is to focus on the model, rather than our use of the model, to devise a systematic way of relating sentences like "Pat's house is blue" and "Joe's car is green." We want to have the kind of model that, by including a sentence like "Pat's house is blue," excludes sentences like "Pat's house is green," "Pat's house is chartreuse," and so on. We also haven't given up entirely on properties, but we want to put aside the question of whether they are objects with names. We still want to say that "Pat's house is blue" means that Pat's house has the property of being blue, and that "Joe's house is blue" means it has that same property, in some sense or other.

There is some motivation for using both approaches. We would like the users of a model, who have agreed to say "Pat's house is blue," also to agree not to say "Pat's house is vermilion," but agreement by itself provides no obvious guarantee that they will do so. On the other hand, the only account we have so far of whether "Pat's house is blue" is part of the model, is precisely the users of the model agreeing to say it. The model can allow only one of "Pat's house is blue" and "Pat's house is cornflower," without telling you which one.

the only account we have so far of whether "Pat's house is blue" is part of the model, is precisely the users of the model agreeing to say it. — Srap Tasmaner

Which raises new questions.

(1) Are we really either entitled or required to say there is a model here at all, or are we really only talking about what people agree to say and not say?

If you argue first that being a user of a model just is saying certain things not others, and nothing else, you can quickly reach the conclusion that the model itself is unnecessary.

(2) So what does being a user of the model amount to? If I say "Pat's house is green," and you say, "Pat's house is aqua," can we still be considered users of the same model? Do we have different models, or do we disagree about which sentence is part of the model?

The no-models account seems to have nothing to say here at all: we just say different things; if there are reasons for that, they will come from elsewhere (perhaps even a causal account).

Declarative sentences work by pointing a word or word-string at one or more objects. — bongo fury

Why is this at all un-obvious?

I suppose, because why would we need a sentence to point "white" at snow and not need another sentence to point "snow" at snow?

And, because perhaps we don't need a sentence to point "white" at snow. "White" already applies to what it applies to, and that happens to include snow. Otherwise the sentence wouldn't be true.

But we need a sentence to point out, highlight, the pointing or application of "white" to snow in particular, out of all the other things it applies to.

I think that's just about enough setup to begin talking about truth.

I thought something like a simple model of language would be more useful than going round and round about what existing idioms mean. It was intended to be uncontroversial, which turns out to be as much as is uncontroversial of something you might call a kind of functionalism. I'm letting the word "model" do a lot of the work, which some people may not like. I haven't, for instance, tied linguistic behavior to anything more, occasions of utterance, what utterance might imply, anything like that.

Any strenuous objections so far?

I'm just saying what we all know; that we know, in the most basic sense, pre-linguistic sensory experience, which our language cannot capture without losing its living quality and distorting it into a world of fixed entities and facts; which, in other words our language cannot adequately capture even though it can express linguistic truths and falsities which pertain to that collective representational schema we call the world.

To say otherwise would be to claim that animals do not experience anything at all. — Janus

That first sentence is very long, but the more I read it over, the more it looks like a partially formed incomplete thought. Be that as it may, I've thought long and hard about what you've been saying and I think, but I'm not at all certain of it, that you seem to be claiming - roughly mind you - that language doesn't do any justice(so to speak) to language less creatures experiences. You seem to also want to say that it cannot, despite our being able to use it to make true claims about our shared world, which you call "that collective representational schema".

The last sentence clearly suggests that we only have two choices when it comes to talking about the thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience of language less creatures. We can either hold the view that you hold or claim that language less creatures do not have any experience at all.

That's not true.

The approach one takes towards setting out the meaningful experience of language less creatures is pivotal to one's understanding, assuming one maintains coherency by avoiding self-contradiction and/or equivocation. Different approaches often lead to different consequences. Our respective approaches are remarkably different. Being a charitable reader, the one you've employed/adopted leads you to believe that language cannot capture the meaningful experience of language less creatures.

Whereas my approach leads me to first question what it takes to 'capture' the meaningful experience of language less creatures. What are we expecting to be able to do with language? Language cannot reproduce meaningful experience. We're just offering reports and/or accounts of meaningful experience. We're not attempting to accurately reproduce each and every aspect of meaningful experience in our report/account of it.

Perhaps you would find it helpful to adjust your expectations regarding what we can do with language.

I haven't, for instance, tied linguistic behavior to anything more, occasions of utterance, what utterance might imply, anything like that.

Any strenuous objections so far? — Srap Tasmaner

I appreciate that the attempt to begin an analysis of something like truth with words and sentences taken as grounding categorical objects can be quite useful in building and improving on computational machines , but it seems to me to be utterly sterile and un-insightful in grappling with why and how humans actually use language. There are no words or sentences outside o f their actual context use, and in their use a word does not point at an object, it creates the object in that it produces a new sense of meaning.
If one doesn't ground the meaning of words and sentences in purpose-driven contextual senses arising out of actual, always unique situations of uses , and instead tries to lift out features of words and sentences
that can act as self-identically persisting meanings whose stable relations we can study via determinations of ‘truth’, we have perhaps contributed to our ability to build better machines. But we have not understood why truth is an unstable notion derived from more fundamental concepts liken intelligibility and relevance. It is the latter which are fundamental to actual language use. Every use of a word or sentence opens up a new way in which that utterance is intelligible and relevant.
Most definitions of truth conceal this by treating these features as if they can be cut away from what we are doing when we understand or misunderstand each other.