@Banno

The Revision theory, discussed in some other posts, appears to offer a way to map out the circularity of the T-sentence definition of Truth.
— Banno

...
As I mentioned before, Tarski didn't think of the T-sentence as being a definition of truth, only as something that must be entailed by the definition of truth. — Michael

As Michael noted, Tarski didn't think of the T-sentence as being a definition of truth and, I'd add, neither was his actual definition of truth circular. Here's Tarski's comments from his 1944 paper:

(T) X is true if, and only if, p.
...
It should be emphasized that neither the expression (T) itself (which is not a sentence, but only a schema of a sentence) nor any particular instance of the form (T) can be regarded as a definition of truth. We can only say that every equivalence of the form (T) obtained by replacing 'p' by a particular sentence, and 'X' by a name of this sentence, may be considered a partial definition of truth, which explains wherein the truth of this one individual sentence consists. The general definition has to be, in a certain sense, a logical conjunction of all these partial definitions.
...
A definition of truth can be obtained in a very simple way from that of another semantic notion, namely, of the notion of satisfaction.

Satisfaction is a relation between arbitrary objects and certain expressions called "sentential functions." These are expressions like "x is white," "x is greater than y," etc. Their formal structure is analogous to that of sentences; however, they may contain the so-called free variables (like 'x' and 'y' in "x is greater than y"), which cannot occur in sentences.
...
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. — The Semantic Conception of Truth: and the Foundations of Semantics - Alfred Tarski, 1944

For example, consider a model [*] where there are a set of objects including white snow. In that model, the sentential function "x is white" is satisfied by snow. Regular sentences, such as "snow is white", are special cases of sentential functions and are satisfied by all or no objects (for technical details, see Haack, p206-207). Thus truth (in a model) is defined in terms of satisfaction which, in turn, is defined in terms of inclusion in a set of objects.

--

[*] "... in his original paper, Tarski gives an absolute rather than a model-theoretic definition; 'satisfies' and hence 'true' is defined with respect to sequences of objects in the actual world, not with respect to sequences of objects in a model or 'possible world' (e.g. 'there is a city north of Birmingham' is true, absolutely, but false in a model in which the domain is, say, {London, Exeter, Birmingham, Southampton}" - Haack

I don't disagree with any of that.

Others have said otherwise.

It was, after all, a ways back.

What do you think of the link, if any, to Davidson's rejection of conceptual schema? Davidson's strategy seems to me to be showing that conceptual schema, if they exist, must be private; but that leads to their being incoherent, unintelligible. Hence, he rejects the notion. — Banno

Well, if you believe that Wittgenstein's point about a private language is well-founded, then it would follow that Davidson is correct to reject the notion of a private conceptual schema. It would be incoherent and unintelligible. — Sam26

Can you describe sight and colour to a man born blind?

What?

Can you describe sight and colour to a man born blind?

So have you spoken to any blind folk about this?

https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/08/17/blind-people-understand-color/

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/making-sense-of-how-the-blind-see-color/

So have you spoken to any blind folk about this? — Banno

Yes. On the old forum there was a blind poster named Maya. I think a few people tried to explain sight and colour to her but she said that she couldn't make any sense of it at all.

Not sure of the relevance to the topic, either.

Not sure of the relevance to the topic, either. — Banno

The subjective quality of visual (and other) experiences is private, but not "incoherent, unintelligible".

:roll:

Sure. Bye.

As for Ramsey, I can't claim to have read him. But encounters with the people on this forum and thinking through their thoughts have shifted my beliefs. — Moliere

Well worth a read. Apparently Davidson (much quoted here) used to have a term 'Ramsey Effect' for the revelation that one's new philosophical insight had actually already been discovered by Ramsey!

It should be emphasized that neither the expression (T) (....) nor any particular instance of the form (T) can be regarded as a definition of truth. — Andrew M

In seeking an answer to the question, “what is truth”, that passage says, in a modernized, which is to say, seriously overblown, manner, nothing effectively superior to the entry on pg 45.

Anthropology/psychology (satisfaction) to metaphysics (truth), is limestone/gypsum to a biscuit recipe.

We might look at an example. I like the kettle.

"The kettle is boiling" is true IFF the kettle is boiling...

Let's take a look at the bolded bit. Some folk look at it and see it as representing or naming a fact... For them the bit in bold models or represents or somehow stands for the fact. They insert an interpretive step between the bolded bit and the boiling kettle.

If you ask them what the fact is, the will say it is something like that the kettle is boiling, apparently oblivious to the redundancy of that expression: the bolded bit stands for the fact that the kettle is boiling...

I don't think that this conjured extra step is needed...

The fact that the kettle is boiling is not distinct from the bolded bit...

The bolded bit is not a scheme that is seperate from the world. — Banno

My interest in this discussion has been whether truth remains recognisable once correspondence is jettisoned in favour of deflationism, and/or whether deflationism without correspondence can make sense of the notion of truth. I have attempted to argue that deflationism-without-correspondence leads to truth relativism. The discussion now appears to have moved on, so I thought I'd try and summarise my concerns.

I have not been alone in arguing against what @Banno presents above. My argument against it is that it collapses the distinction between sentence and world. It follows that there either is no world and propositions are true, or else there are no propositions and the world is true.

However, my concerns are based more in science (or my view of it as a layperson, at least). If the proposition "water boils at 100 degrees celsius" has no correspondence to the world, then it is true only because we (or most of us, or most experts) say that it's true, not because that's how the world is, or how water is. This proposition about the boiling point of water (at sea level) might nowadays be accepted as a kind of analytic truth, given that it is so well established, and therefore is more conducive to the deflationary view of truth. But what about less established truths at the edges of scientific research? What is the point of investigating the truth of the statement "three moons of our solar system contain water" if it's all just talk or opinion unmoored from the facts?

Since Wittgenstein has been mentioned, and the use theory of meaning is seen as being closely associated with deflationism, I find that this quote from PI shows that Wittgenstein may not have been the deflationist he is taken to be:

15. The word “signify” is perhaps most straightforwardly applied when the name is actually a mark on the object signified. Suppose that the tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shows his assistant such a mark, the assistant brings the tool that has that mark on it. In this way, and in more or less similar ways, a name signifies a thing, and is given to a thing. — When philosophizing, it will often prove useful to say to ourselves: naming something is rather like attaching a name tag to a thing. — PI

Some have rightly pointed out that not everything is a name and that not all words correspond to things in the world. I'll admit that this makes deflationism seem appealing. What I take issue with is deflationism as a wholesale rejection of correspondence. Maybe I'm alone in (mis)understanding deflationism in this way. I don't know.

Suppose we have a true sentence of the form

S is true IFF p

where S is some sentence and p gives the meaning of S.

What sort of thing is S? well, it's going to be a true proposition (here, continuing the convention adopted from the SEP article on truth of using "proposition" as a carry-all for sentence, statements, utterance, truth-bearer, or whatever one prefers).

And what sort of thing is p? Since the T-sentence is true, it is a state of affairs, a fact. — Banno

I think most correspondence theorists (and others) understand the RHS to be a fact, too. When understood in this way, the truth bearer on the LHS of the T-sentence corresponds to the fact on the RHS of the T-sentence, or vice versa. In order to avoid correspondence, it seems necessary to argue either that the LHS and RHS are both sentences or are both boiling kettles.

I think most correspondence theorists (and others) understand the RHS to be a fact, too. When understood in this way, the truth bearer on the LHS of the T-sentence corresponds to the fact on the RHS of the T-sentence, or vice versa. In order to avoid correspondence, it seems necessary to argue either that the LHS and RHS are both sentences or are both boiling kettles. — Luke

Maybe a way to think on this is to say that there isn't always some material component to facts.

The abstractions are like this -- logical rules, arithmetic.

After all, you'd likely agree that "A or not-A" is true iff A or not-A, where A is a proposition. There are times where this rule is put to question, but generally speaking people see the sense of the proposition -- it's a tautology.

There's nothing material that corresponds to a tautology, though. And there's even possibly an infinite number of tautologies (depending on what the space of abstractions is -- something real or not).

As I see it, the deflationist is allowing for a wider interpretation of truth than the correspondence theorist, and it allows for things like abstractions to be true or propositions with empty-names to be true (or false) without the possible mystification/temptation of non-entity-entities.

And, in a way, you can just interpret the T-sentence as analytically spelling out what correspondence consists of -- I don't think these things are in opposition, per se, only that they can be read that way. In answer to your conclusion of your paragraph here, I'd say that the RHS is both a sentence and a kettle, and the LHS is a sentence.

Maybe a way to think on this is to say that there isn't always some material component to facts. — Moliere

I agree. What I’m arguing against is the deflationary view that there is never any material component to facts; that facts are no more than language use.

In answer to your conclusion of your paragraph here, I'd say that the RHS is both a sentence and a kettle, and the LHS is a sentence. — Moliere

If they’re both sentences, then it is a tautology and tells us nothing. Otherwise, it is a correspondence (if true), is it not?

I agree. What I’m arguing against is the deflationary view that there is never any material component to facts; that facts are no more than language use. — Luke

I think the suspicion is that the only way we'd be able to set out material facts is through language, and that's what the RHS is purportedly doing, but it's funny because we're really just imagining the scenario. It doesn't add anything, or say anything, when in addition to the T-sentence we have:

"The kettle is boiling" is true iff the kettle is boiling AND that the kettle is boiling is a material fact.

The latter meaning is already contained in an actual utterance, if one is a materialist or correspondence theorist. If one is an idealist, though --

"The kettle is boiling" is true iff the kettle is boiling AND the kettle in our intuition is boiling

Whether the kettle is material or ideal "drops out", regardless of the speaker -- the sentence works whether you append the metaphysical belief onto it or not. And, in fact, it'd be more confusing if we appended our metaphysical beliefs to our theories of truth because then we'd just be begging the question in favor of what we already believe (one motivation for developing truth sans-metaphysics is that it might allow us to actually talk metaphysics in a more productive way)

What I’m arguing against is the deflationary view that there is never any material component to facts; — Luke

As far as I understand it, the deflationary view is that truth isn't a property, or if it is then it isn't a substantial property. The sentence "'snow is white' is true" is nothing more (or not much more) than the sentence "snow is white".

It doesn't say anything about whether or not snow being white is a material fact.

Tarski didn't think of the T-sentence as being a definition of truth and, I'd add, neither was his actual definition of truth circular. — Andrew M

I am curious why naming plays no part in Tarski's T-sentence, as naming seems to affect the truth or falsity of the T-sentence itself. Am I missing something ?

The problem of naming

Tarski proposed:

The T-sentence - "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white.
A definition of truth can be obtained in a very simple way from that of another semantic notion, namely, of the notion of satisfaction.
Satisfaction is a relation between arbitrary objects and certain expressions called "sentential functions." These are expressions like "x is white,"

A sentence such as "snow is white" is true if in the sentential sentence "x is white", x is satisfied by snow.

200,000 years ago snow had not been named. Today, snow has been named, whether "white" in English or "schnee" in German. Therefore, there must have been a point in time when snow was named "snow", ie, what Kripke calls "baptised".

Although the right hand side of Tarski's biconditional is a metalanguage, as he uses the example of the object snow and the property white, for the moment consider a world whereby snow is white. In a world whereby snow is not white, or we consider the general T-sentence "P is Q" is true IFF R is S, the same problem of naming occurs.

Before naming snow as "snow" and white as "white"
As "white" didn't exist, in the sentential function "x is white", there is no x that satisfies "white", therefore "snow is white" can never be true.

After naming snow as "snow" and white as "white"
As snow has been named "snow" and white has been named "white", in the sentential function "x is white", x is always satisfied by snow. Therefore, "snow is white" is always true.

In summary, the T-sentence is false before snow had been named "snow" and white named "white". The T-sentence is always true after snow had been named "snow" and white named "white". IE, the T-sentence itself may be either true or false dependant upon how its parts have been named.

Do we all basically agree that we never get "outside" of language. Truth is a matter of comparing a statement to another statement?

Do we all basically agree that we never get "outside" of language. Truth is a matter of comparing a statement to another statement? — Tate

Most of the time I live my life without saying anything. There's more to the world than just language. Those other things in the world are often what make a statement true.

There's more to the world than just language. Those other things in the world are often what make a statement true. — Michael

It's just that we have a mystery box in the flowchart specifically regarding that last sentence. It looks like you've stepped out beyond the speaker and the world to affirm that this is what truth is.

I think you're happy with this mystery box. A number of philosophers from Nietzsche to Foucault weren't so happy with it.

It's just that we have a mystery box in the flowchart specifically regarding that last sentence. — Tate

What’s the mystery about it? That last sentence often refers to some non-linguistic thing in the world. They’re the things we see and feel and eat.

It looks like you've stepped out beyond the speaker and the world to affirm that this is what truth is. — Tate

Beyond the speaker but not beyond the world.

Kuhn's paradigms are certainly theoretical models, if theory is taken to be the propositions held to be true by the paradigm. As if the Copernican paradigm did not theorise that the Earth moves — Banno

I tend to follow Joseph Rouse’s reading of Kuhn:

“Paradigms should not be understood as beliefs (even tacit beliefs) agreed upon by community members, but instead as exemplary ways of conceptualizing and intervening in particular situations. Accepting a paradigm is more like acquiring and using a set of skills than it is like understanding and believing a statement.

Scientists USE paradigms rather than believing them. The use of a paradigm in research typically addresses related problems by employ­ing shared concepts, symbolic expressions, experimental and mathematical tools and procedures, and even some of the same theoretical statements. Scientists need only understand how to use these various elements in ways that others would accept. These elements of shared practice thus need not presuppose any comparable unity in scientists’ beliefs about what they are doing when they use them.

Indeed, one role of a paradigm is to enable sci­entists to work successfully without having to provide a detailed account of what they are doing or what they believe about it. Kuhn noted that scientists

“can agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting to produce, a full interpretation or rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpretation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding research….

I [once] conceived normal science as a result of a consensus among the members of a scientific community ... in order to account for the way they did research and, especially, for the unanimity with which they ordinarily evaluated the research done by others. ...What I finally realized ... was that no consensus of quite that kind was required. ...If [scientists] accepted a sufficient set of standard [problem solutions], they could model their own subsequent research on them without needing to agree about which set of characteristics of these examples made them standard, justified their
acceptance. (Kuhn 1977a, xviii–xix)


The result of this recognition is to think of scientific communities as composed of fellow practitioners rather than of fellow believers.”

That last sentence often refers to some non-linguistic thing in the world. — Michael

So if a sentence is "the kettle is black", then presumably there's some nonlinguistic element which can render it true. If you say "the kettle is black" and I say "the kettle is not black" the truth of the matter is determined, not by language, but by the actual kettle and its actual colour? Is that what you mean?

f one supposes that there are various, discreet forms of life, then one might be tempted to suppose them to be incommensurate. Something like that seems to sit with the lion comment.

But if forms of life were incommensurate, would we recognise them to be forms of life? It seems that in order to recognise certain behaviours as a form of life, we have to recognise the parallels with our own form of life. The language, practices and values of a form of life must be recognised as such in order for us to recognise a form of life.

So it seems that forms of life cannot the totally incommensurate, one to the other — Banno

Are there examples of certain forms of life being completely invisible to me? What about scientific conceptualizations of nature? Are these forms of life?
Isn’t the history of science littered not just with reinterpretations or falsifications of earlier conceptual domains but of the production of entire domains that simply didn’t exist for earlier eras?

Yes

What’s the mystery about it? — Michael

One sign of mystery is a collection of arguments known as the slingshot. It's the reason we say the extension of any sentence is it's truth value. All truths designate the same Great Fact.

So what about if I dispute your claim by saying that the silver coloured screw in my kitchen drawer is still part of 'the kettle' even though it fell off years ago. You say it isn't.What fact of the world could resolve that for us?

Or if I say that your 'very, very dark gray' is sufficiently dark to qualify as 'black', but you disagree. What fact of the world could resolve that for us?

It seems the truth of "the kettle is black" is entirely dependent on the meaning of 'kettle' and 'black'. All about language.

Have I just chosen a bad example where there's a rare amount of ambiguity?

It seems the truth of "the kettle is black" is entirely dependent on the meaning of 'kettle' and 'black' — Isaac

Not entirely dependent. “The kettle is black” is not true by definition. The truth of “the kettle is black” is determined by both the meaning of “the kettle is black” and by whether or not some non-linguistic feature of the world satisfies that definition.

You can change the truth of “the kettle is black” either by changing the meaning of the sentence or by painting the kettle a different colour.