You want the kettle's boiling to be true yet uninterpreted. — Banno

I don't care either way. I've just been reading about Foucault and Nietzsche, so I'm interested in the idea of dropping the will to truth, which means dropping the assumption that truth-seeking is a good unto itself.

A side issue is that we never escape the bounds of language, so to speak. Truth is not a matter of comparing a statement to an uninterpreted reality. Particularly I was intrigued that when I told Michael that, he understands the question. For some reason, you don't.

Truth is not a matter of comparing a statement to an uninterpreted reality. — Tate

I agree, so long as you do not conclude that there are no true statements.

Substitute any sentence you like for P. — Banno

You're right, you're right -- forgot for a moment that this is just a schema, and it includes the quotes to produce a name for the substituted sentence --- since "... is true" needs a referring expression, which P isn't. It's just a place-holder, not a name, not even a variable.

I agree, so long as you do not conclude that there are no true statements. — Banno

As long as you deflate that, you agree with Nietzsche. The only extra thing is the realization that truth is actually about power. Putin and Trump are doing something primal: using a thirst for truth as a weapon.

Cheers.

I thought you were done here. Any further thoughts on knowledge?

I'm interested in the idea of dropping the will to truth — Tate

You hush your postmodern mouth!

And give me ten push-ups, or ten Our Fathers, whichever you like.

As long as you deflate that, you agree with Nietzsche. — Tate

What?

I'm interested in the idea of dropping the will to truth
— Tate

You hush your postmodern mouth! — Srap Tasmaner

It's just part of the death of God. You don't get a better condo in heaven for being a faithful truth seeker.

As long as you deflate that, you agree with Nietzsche.
— Tate

What? — Banno

That truth is not about correspondence between a statement and uninterrupted reality. That's Nietzsche.

There are other views, besides deflation, that reject correspondence. The rejection of correspondence does not imply the acceptance of truth as will to power.

And as said elsewhere, the power of truth derives from its illocutionary force, while the topic here has been the logical structure of true statements.

SO are you going to argue that what makes a statement true is one's willing it to be true? That might be fun.

The rejection of correspondence does not imply the acceptance of truth as will to power. — Banno

I think correspondence is the only truth theory Nietzsche knew about. It's not that truth is inherently about power. There's a natural drive to know things. It's that when one group gains power using lies, a call for truth-seeking goes up from the defeated.

Notice how Judaism and Christianity call Satan the Father of the Lie, where Jesus is the Truth, the Light, and the Way. Nietzsche says the way to understand why truth is so central to Abrahamic religions is to see how it relates to power.

And as said elsewhere, the power of truth derives from its illocutionary force, while the topic here has been the logical structure of true statements. — Banno

It may be that logic is the tail and the history of power relations is the dog. Maybe.

SO are you going to argue that what makes a statement true is one's willing it to be true? That might be fun. — Banno

Ugh. I'm no Nietzsche. Just recently on this forum, a bunch of posters ganged up on me and persistently misinterpreted what I was saying. When I tried to explain, it was rejected and more piled on. They were trying to control the truth through bullying.

So I put up a thread that proved them wrong and none of them even noticed, the assholes.

It would be hard for me to argue that the superior will controls the truth. I think some truth theorists wouldn't be able to escape that conclusion though.

Jesus, this thread is getting boring.

Indeed, you need it to be raining. Which is already to interpret the world, to use language.

That is, for "it is raining" to be true, it needs to be raining.

Which is the exact point made by the T-sentence.

SO what, if anything, is our disagreement? — Banno

This is incorrect Banno. The T-sentence says "it is raining is true iff it is raining. This does not say anything about the meaning of "to be raining".

Either "it is raining" is always, already interpreted, as you assert, in which case "to be raining" is something completely different from "it is raining", or it is not already interpreted.

Having it both ways, which you demonstrate over and over again is your desire, is a matter of dishonesty; the claim that you can eat your cake and have it too.

I thought you were done here. — Banno

Just done with my experiment. Still thinking about truth.

I remember learning that one way to think about T-sentences is that a sentence is used on the right but mentioned on the left. Which would be helpful if using were anywhere near as clear as mentioning.

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) — Moliere

You make a great point and you almost had me convinced there. However, my concerns about truth relativism linger. If deflationism is the neutral view of truth "sans-metaphysics", then the facts of reality are irrelevant to truth. If true statements do not correspond to how the world is, then what makes them true? The worry is that we can never be mistaken about what we say is true, because there is no more to truth than our collective say-so.

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. — Michael

Yes, that's my concern and what I'm attempting to argue against.

It's as if you are of the opinion that a deflationary account does not permit sentences to be about how things are. Hence you think it leads to truth relativism, that sentences are true regardless of how things are, that water doesn't boil at 100℃, and that deflationist amounts to talk unmoored from the facts. — Banno

Yes. Deflationism rejects correspondence - specifically, the correspondence between a truth bearer and the facts - doesn't it?

Deflation does not seek to make kettles and boiling water disappear, or to unmoor the words "kettle" and "boiling" from their use. — Banno

You've conflated the facts with the use of words here. The use of a sentence does not boil water.

It's just about the way the word "true" works. it's the observation that "It is true that the kettle is boiling" is the same, in certain specifiable ways, as "the kettle is boiling". That specification is still that both sentences are true exactly if the kettle is boiling. — Banno

How does this differ from the correspondence theory?

Would there were a good clear potted history of the use of T-sentences.

So we have Tarski explicating the requirements of any semantic theory of truth using T-schema in the first part of his paper, then developing that for formal languages using designation and satisfaction between an object language and a metalanguage. We then have various uses of T-sentences to explicate both deflation and correspondence. Then Davidson uses them to explain meaning in terms of truth. Now we have Gupta's oddly complex variation, with two novel logical operators, truth introduction and truth elimination...

1. A
2. "A" is true (truth introduction)

and

1. A is true
2. "A" (truth elimination)

These promise to do much the same sort of task as one might set for T-sentences, apparently bypassing (or just ignoring) the issue of substitution into opaque contexts, which in any case runs counter to our intuitions.



https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545102

You've conflated the facts with the use of words here. The use of a sentence does not boil water. — Luke

Not conflating so much as recognising.

How does this differ from the correspondence theory? — Luke

It seems we have differing views of what is involved in each.

How does this differ from the deflationary theory? '"the kettle is boiling" is true' just says that the kettle is boiling.

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. — Mww

Yeah, kids these days with their logic and stuff...

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 ? — RussellA

Maybe - the quoted part on the LHS is the name of the sentence on the RHS.

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". — RussellA

Yes, but naming it doesn't affect what it is. 200,000 years ago, snow wasn't named "snow", and the color white wasn't named "white", yet snow was still white. At least, so the scientists tell us.

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. — RussellA

The names didn't exist but the things named did. The T-schema didn't exist either, but the things that we might later schematize did.

That last post was not very satisfactory. Trouble is, I'm not at all sure which of the many correspondence theories you are espousing.

So perhaps it would help if you were to set out what correspondence, in your view, is?

For my part, if we are to talk about correspondence in any workable way, we would be talking about the material equivalence in the t-schema.

And I suspect, following the usual arguments for deflation, that any alternative view will leave out something of worth in our notion of truth, or include too much.

In particular, a theory espousing correspondence to the facts introduces unnecessary ontological individuals - the unnameable boiling kettle that @Michael's view seems to requirer.

How does this differ from the deflationary theory? '"the kettle is boiling" is true' just says that the kettle is boiling. — Banno

I’ve already told you:

Deflationism rejects correspondence - specifically, the correspondence between a truth bearer and the facts - doesn't it? — Luke

You failed to respond.

You've conflated the facts with the use of words here. The use of a sentence does not boil water.
— Luke

Not conflating so much as recognising. — Banno

Again, you failed to respond to the argument that sentences are not kettles and that using sentences does not boil water. You want to collapse the distinction between the facts and language use, but you offer no response to this.

As Meta said, you want to have your cake and eat it too.

That post is clear as mud.

I'm nonplussed. You don't seem to me to be saying anything useable.

it is still the case that a sentence’s truth value also depends on something which isn’t that, or another, sentence. — Michael

Then how? You say that the truth of "the kettle is black " depends on both that the kettle is black and that some hidden value is in such and such a state, but then you say absolutely any state will do, so long as it's referred to by the expression "the kettle is black". So the state of that hidden value drops out of the picture, since it can be in absolutely any state so long as that state is described by the expression "the kettle is black". Hence "the kettle is black" is true if the kettle is black.

Redundancy doesn't reject realism, nor need it be relativistic. You might say, as I do, that some hidden state constrains our neural models of it. You might also say, as I would, that we have an interest in those neural models being at least similar in function so that we can cooperate over manipulating those hidden states. You might also say that language is used (among other things) as a tool to this end. But since all of this goes on subconsciously, most of the time, and, most importantly, those putative 'hidden states' are simply hypothetical matters used in a scientific model of how brains work, there's simply not a mechanism by which they can act as truth-makers for sentence in English, without being entirely subsumed by simply 'the kettle is black'.

I would agree, and you might too, if he instead said "some feature of the world satisfies that definition", dropping the confusion of "non-linguistic". It's the boiling kettle. — Banno

Absolutely. It's what I've tried to get at in my response above.

Again, you failed to respond to the argument that sentences are not kettles and that using sentences does not boil water. You want to collapse the distinction between the facts and language use, but you offer no response to this. — Luke

I used Ramsey's arguments against Russell in my response to @Michael (or at least, my interpretation of it). It answers the same question you're asking here. If something 'outside' of language constitutes the 'kettle' regarding which we're assessing the truth of some property, then what is it?

You might say "it's that collection of molecules" or something, but I could disagree and say that it properly includes some additional molecules nearby, or historically attached. No fact of the world could resolve that disagreement. Even 'molecules' can be disputed. Is "boiling" exactly at gaseous states, or is it when the water visibly bubbles, or is that just 'simmering'? Does 'boiling' require a lot more bubbles? How much of the water in the kettle has to be gaseous for it to be "boiling"? And so on...

We don't seem to have a connection between the causes of our language use and the language itself which are specific enough to act as truth-makers for any language use. So the truth of "the kettle is boiling" cannot go any further than that the kettle is boiling, without disintegrating.

Again, you failed to respond to the argument that sentences are not kettles and that using sentences does not boil water. You want to collapse the distinction between the facts and language use, but you offer no response to this.
— Luke

I used Ramsey's arguments against Russell in my response to Michael (or at least, my interpretation of it). It answers the same question you're asking here. If something 'outside' of language constitutes the 'kettle' regarding which we're assessing the truth of some property, then what is it? — Isaac

This is an objection to correspondence. I don't see how that answers my objection to redundancy - that redundancy collapses facts into language use. Is the boiling kettle true, or is the statement about the boiling kettle true? Or both? Is reality true or are statements true?

But my real concern is this:

Redundancy doesn't reject realism, nor need it be relativistic. — Isaac

With respect to truth, what is the difference between the correspondence theory and a redundancy that doesn't reject realism?

The SEP article on the correspondence theory states:

Deflationists maintain that correspondence theories need to be deflated; that their central notions, correspondence and fact (and their relatives), play no legitimate role in an adequate account of truth and can be excised without loss. — SEP article on The Correspondence Theory of Truth

Rather than excising facts, realism (or redundancy-plus-realism) allows facts back in as truthmakers.

Is the boiling kettle true, or is the statement about the boiling kettle true? — Luke

The statement. The boiling kettle can't be 'true' since there are no matters, outside of language, which could make it so.

what is the difference between the correspondence theory and a redundancy that doesn't reject realism? — Luke

I tried to explain that within my response that you quoted. The fact that some 'real' hidden states might constrain our neural models doesn't have any mechanism by which it can make sentences true or not. A sentence cannot 'correspond' to something other than by definition, and definition is not specific enough to hook into whatever hidden states we might theorise constrain it.

The boiling kettle can't be 'true' since there are no matters, outside of language, which could make it so. — Isaac

Therefore, there are no boiling kettles outside of language, either? There are only statements about kettles but no actual kettles?

If something 'outside' of language constitutes the 'kettle' regarding which we're assessing the truth of some property, then what is it? — Isaac

The kettle itself; not merely talk about a kettle.

You might say "it's that collection of molecules" or something, but I could disagree and say that it properly includes some additional molecules nearby, or historically attached. No fact of the world could resolve that disagreement — Isaac

I don't believe there's much controversy about what a kettle is.

Is "boiling" exactly at gaseous states, or is it when the water visibly bubbles, or is that just 'simmering'? Does 'boiling' require a lot more bubbles? How much of the water in the kettle has to be gaseous for it to be "boiling"? — Isaac

Boiling point

We don't seem to have a connection between the causes of our language use and the language itself which are specific enough to act as truth-makers for any language use. — Isaac

I don't see that specificity matters. Redundancy without realism leads to relativism and a disconnection of language from the facts of the world. If you accept realism, then you also accept some form of facts, correspondence and truthmaking.

A sentence cannot 'correspond' to something other than by definition, and definition is not specific enough to hook into whatever hidden states we might theorise constrain it. — Isaac

Then what is the point of testing a theory in science?

You want to name non-linguistic things, as if that very act were not linguistic. — Banno

The act of naming is linguistic, but the thing named is not linguistic. A kettle is not a word. A kettle being black is not a sentence.