Are you saying that me painting the kettle red changes the meaning of the sentence "the kettle is black"? — Michael

No. I don't see how you're getting that.

No. I don't see how you're getting that. — Isaac

Because you're rejecting my claim that the sentence "the kettle is black" means the same thing at T₁ and at T₂. If it's not me painting the kettle red that changes the meaning then what does change the meaning?

you're rejecting my claim that the sentence "the kettle is black" means the same thing at T1 and at T2 — Michael

No, I agreed to that. You stipulated that it does for the sake of your thought experiment.

If it's not me painting the kettle red that changes the meaning then what does change the meaning? — Michael

Nothing, we chose not to, according to the rules you stipulated. You stipulating such rules is what determined the truth value at T2

...

T1 - we decide the meaning of "the kettle is black" is such that it is true.

T1.5 - You paint a kettle.

T2 - we decide we decide the meaning of "the kettle is black" is such that it is false (for the newly painted kettle).

Our action at T2 is completely unconstrained by your action at T1.5.

Our action at T2 is, of course, constrained by you constraining it for the sake of argument. That's just tautologous and doesn't tell us anything about what is necessarily the case.

No, I agreed to that. — Isaac

Then it is exactly as I said:

1. The meaning of the sentence didn't change at T₂ but its truth value did.

2. If the truth value of a sentence can change without the meaning of that sentence changing then the truth value of that sentence depends on more than just its meaning.

3. In this specific case the truth value changed because a material object changed, and so the truth of that sentence depends on that material object.

Which of these three claims do you disagree with?

2.

Your argument seems the equivalent of...

If the {on/off state of a light} can change without {switch for that light} changing then the {on/off state of a light} depends on more than just the {switch for that light}.

Yet in the above scenario I'm not prevented in any way from still using the switch to entirely determine whether the light is on or off, right? It's not like it requires {switch} plus {other factor} to be on. The switch still turns the light on or off. It's just that something else does too.

We could end up in a kind of war of attrition between me constantly flicking the switch to turn the light on, and this other factor constantly turning it back off again. As I said to @Srap Tasmaner above...

If we want an ephemeral, relativist 'truth', then sure we could compare the 'kettle' of any given conversation to the 'black' in that same conversation. — Isaac

If we have to agree to the meaning of "the kettle is black ", then we have to also agree that your actions at T1.5 constitute "painting the kettle red". Thus it turns out this {other factor} is linguistically determined too.

Did you paint the kettle red? Only if we agree about 'kettles' and 'painting' and 'red'.

2. — Isaac

Then why did the truth value change if the meaning didn’t? It seems to me to be a contradiction to argue both that a) the truth of a sentence is determined entirely by its meaning and that b) the truth of the sentence changed but its meaning didn’t.

The truth value changed because I painted the kettle red. The material object changed. Therefore the truth of that sentence depends on that material object.

Which would be helpful if using were anywhere near as clear as mentioning. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, good point, for whole sentences. Not, though, for nouns or adjectives, where the distinction is perfectly clear: use a word or phrase to mention a thing, and use a name of the word or phrase to mention the word or phrase. Mention means refer to. Albeit with a hint of 'in passing'.

For whole sentences, the distinction is clear enough if clarity is desired. Either

Use a sentence to mention an alleged entity corresponding to the whole sentence. And whether or not you commit to the existence of the entity thus alleged, try not to equivocate between that and the sentence itself (mentioned by use of its name). (Picture 1.)

Or

Use a sentence to use one or more of its component parts to mention actual things or classes. (Picture 2.) Or to perform your preferred speech act to which the picture does no justice.

Either way, drop "fact" and "proposition" and "state", if clarity is your aim. Choose "sentence" or "abstract truth-maker" or "situation" or "thing". For as long as these remain somewhat less easily confused.

It's the reason we say the extension of any sentence is it's truth value — Tate

And how does this account for the truth value of a sentence changing? Truth values don’t change apropos of nothing. The truth value of some sentences change because a particular physical event happens. So why is it that physical event that changes the sentence’s truth value and not a different one? Because the sentence refers to that physical event and not a different one.

I think either the slingshot arguments are mistaken or they’re not addressing the same kind of extension that I’m addressing. See here and here.

A kettle is not a word. — Michael

Agree.

A kettle being black is not a sentence. — Michael

Agree, but want to know if "a kettle being black" refers to any combination of these

• the particular kettle indicated by context
• the particular black thing
• kettles in general
• black things in general
• black kettles in general

... which might elaborate picture 2. Or whether you allege, rather, an entity corresponding to the whole sentence "the kettle is black", as per picture 1.

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. — Andrew M

The truth of Tarski's T-Sentence depends on how snow and white have been named

Today, we have Tarski's T-Sentence "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white. The left hand side is the object language, the right hand side is the metalanguage.

In the metalanguage, snow is white, meaning that, in the domain of the metalanguage, snow is white, ie, in the world of the metalanguage, snow is white. The world of the metalanguage may or may not correspond with our world.

I agree that in our world snow is white. However, in the world of the metalanguage, snow may or may not be white.

Possibility One - in the world of the metalanguage, snow has the property white and apples have the property green

1) Let "snow" name snow, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is true
2) Let "snow" name snow, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is false

1) Let "snow" name apple, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is false
2) Let "snow" name apple, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is true

Possibility Two - in the world of the metalanguage, snow has the property green and apples have the property purple.

1) Let "snow" name snow, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is false
2) Let "snow" name snow, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is true
3) Let "snow" name snow, let "white" name purple
Then "snow is white" is false

1) Let "snow" name apple, "white" name white
Then "snow is white" is false
2) Let "snow" name apple, let "white" name green
Then "snow is white" is false
3) Let "snow" name apple, let "white" name purple
Then "snow is white" is true

Summary

If snow is white in a metalanguage, "snow is white" may or may not be true dependant upon how snow and white have been named. Therefore, it is not necessarily true that "snow is white" is true IFF snow is white.

IE, the truth of Tarski's T-Sentence depends on how snow and white have been named, or as Kripke said, "baptised".

You didn't look at the slingshot argument, did you? — Tate

But if I were to take a shot at it, I would say that the “Great Fact” that true sentences refer to is the world.

Just as “the kettle is black” and “the kettle is metal” refer to the same kettle, “the kettle is black” and “snow is white” refer to the same world. In a sense the sentences are “the world is such that the kettle is black” and “the world is such that snow is white”.

But even though in one sense “the kettle is black” and “the kettle is metal” refer to the same thing (the kettle), there’s another sense in which they don’t refer to the same thing: one refers to the kettle being black and the other to it being metal.

I think the slingshot arguments address the first sense of reference, whereas correspondence-like theories address the second.

But I admit that I can’t quite grasp the logic of the slingshot arguments. This is just my intuitive understanding.

But if I were to take a shot at it, I would say that the “Great Fact” that true sentences refer to is the world. — Michael

Yup! This is what I love about the screw in the drawer example -- it gave an intuitive example of the slingshot.

So when you say "The kettle is black" is true because it corresponds to the world, I'd say "The kettle is red" is true because it corresponds to the world -- there's only one world, so there's no "part" that counts as corresponding to any one sentence. When I say it's true, I'm referring to the screw in the drawer which is a part of the kettle -- but that's all the same fact.

Hence why substitution is attacked.

Sufficient to get a job done though. If I say "put the kettle on" I don't need you to know if that includes the screw in the drawer. I assume you gather my intent. I could probably have just said "tea time!" — Isaac

Oliver Sacks tells a story -- his father, he said, was the sort of man who would say to him, "Bring me that glass there on the table," and when young Oliver returned with the glass, his father would say, "Why did you bring me this? I asked for the one on the table." I don't know if that means his father had an odd sense of humor, or his father was abusive and enjoyed putting little Oliver in a double-bind...

Now in our case, you know about the screw in the drawer. Do I? Do you know whether I know?

I think we are forced to ask because what you know about the kettle will inform your intent, and it's your intent I am supposed to grasp, and you and I will both be relying on my knowledge of the kettle for me to grasp your intent.

If, for instance, that screw holds one end of the handle in place, you know whether and how the handle can be used. It will be important for me to have that knowledge too in order to put the kettle on. (I have a dozen or so possible scenarios in my head now, but I assume you don't need any of those spelled out.)

If, on the other hand, that screw was just one of six holding the base on, and the base is perfectly secure with the remaining five, then you could count your knowledge of the missing screw irrelevant. The kettle with five screws is sufficiently intact for making tea, and it is this technically partial kettle, in its current state, that you intend me to put on. You might even be annoyed if I somehow notice the missing screw and go rummaging around for it, since me repairing the kettle was not part of your intent. Or you might be pleased I'm fixing your kettle, but that still wasn't part of your intent.

I'm not saying we can't have vague intentions like "Stand roughly there," but the fact that there are multiple options doesn't mean you didn't have something specific in mind -- which might even be an impossible thing, as with Oliver's dad. Your intention likely includes a 'picture' of 'what success looks like', and that picture can be taken as a paradigm that allows a certain amount of deviation, but not an infinite amount. ("Stand roughly there" doesn't mean stand anywhere at all.)

And vagueness is itself a very specific sort of issue (!), and it's not clear it arises here. Maybe, but not automatically, not in every case.

If we want an ephemeral, relativist 'truth', then sure we could compare the 'kettle' of any given conversation to the 'black' in that same conversation. — Isaac

I don't think there's anything wrong with relying on features of the occasion of utterance. I think it's perfectly routine that we do so. If I ask for the black screwdriver from my toolbox, you might complain that you wouldn't really call that handle 'black', but more of a 'charcoal grey'. But evidently in doing so you know which one I meant. (I might even agree with you.) Again, we're dealing with vagueness in the extension of 'black' at large, but not in these specific circumstances. My intent concerns a quite specific object, and my language is specific enough, given the circumstances, to allow you to determine the object my expression referred to. Of course such a description can refer to other objects, or even fail to pick out this one, given other circumstances, but that's a feature not a bug of language.

(And here I'll add that objections that you might have meant something else, or that we could have chosen a different interpretation, and so on, don't change the fact you didn't and we didn't. You cannot force on us a standard of necessary, eternal meaning that we must admit failing to meet.)

But if we want a 'truth' that gets outside of these conversations... Which use are we going to pick? — Isaac

But I hope you can see how each conversation is successful at getting outside itself, in this sense: it is those concrete objects, the kettle and the screwdriver, we were interested in, and which our intentions concerned; the conversation needs only to fix those as the objects to which we are referring. If every object we were concerned with carried a UUID, and we could keep track of those, we could use those to end up in the same place.

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... — Isaac

That's an interesting way of seeing it. There may be two different presentations of "the world" going on. Under one interpretation, a collective agreement that "the kettle is boiling", when it is in fact boiling, is actually a fact of the world, and in that regard there is not disagreement in the majority of circumstances. If you did an experiment of 100 people in adequate lighting conditions and showed them boiling and non-boiling kettles, asked them whether a given kettle was boiling or not, you'd get a 100% accuracy rate for the label ascribed to the boiling states by the experimenter. In that regard, while individual and novel items of language (protolanguage?) are suspicious from a factual perspective; because they can't easily be generalised without already being expressible in a general way; commonly agreed upon and publicly accessible declarative statements don't have the same property.

(1) "the kettle" is a a referring expression; and
(2) what "the kettle" refers to, or can be used to refer to, is the kettle; and
(3) "the kettle" is an expression, and is not the same as the concrete object the kettle; and
(4) the kettle is a concrete object, and is not the same as the expression "the kettle".

If there's not agreement on this much, we need a different conversation. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree with all of those, I share Isaac's quibble with ( 2 ), but claim that whether it's appropriate to even think of the kettle as a collection of molecules depends upon the practical context. The referring expression "the kettle" I believe has a meaning close to an equivalence class of denoting expressions, you might say "the kettle on the table" and refer to the same concrete object.

I think perhaps the crux of the matter regards the nature of the linguistic dependence of familiar objects. I take it that Isaac has a strong position that they're linguistic all the way down and what they count as publicly is what they are, and the reference mechanism actually references an entity conjured up by collective agreement rather than some concrete fact. The referent of "the kettle" is a collectively enacted categorisation of the environment, rather than some environmental object.

I take it that @Banno has a similar position, but complicates the matter by saying that regardless of the saturation of such interpretations by the categories of language, those expressions nevertheless refer to the kettle because they refer to the kettle in the pragmatic context of the phrase. The environment itself is part of the pragmatic context, and so is the appropriate court of evaluation for statements. You don't have to care about adding molecules to the kettle and severing the reference mechanism of "the kettle" to the kettle, because the necessary enmeshment of world and language is part of how reference works. You can see the expression "the kettle is boiling" both as a string and as what it is used to denote in context. A match between what is referred to, and the properties ascribed to it, and what it denotes in context is a truth, and it says no more to say something is true than this match actually occurring.

But I hope you can see how each conversation is successful at getting outside itself, in this sense: it is those concrete objects, the kettle and the screwdriver, we were interested in, and which our intentions concerned; the conversation need only fix those as the objects to which we are referring. If every object we were concerned with carried a UUID, and we could keep track of those, we could use those to end up in the same place. — Srap Tasmaner

I like where that is going Srap, I think a lot of the present disagreement is related to different intuitions about the nature of the dependence of environmental categories, like what we're (at least allegedly) denoting with "the kettle". There are strong and weak forms of this.

( 1 ) A total determination of the referent of "the kettle" by the underlying collective standards of interpretation.
( 2 ) A partial determination of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards.
( 3 ) No dependence of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards.

By the looks of it, no one here is arguing that ( 3 ) is true and no one here is arguing that ( 1 ) is true. (@Michael, correct me if I'm wrong).

Maybe some information regarding the contrast of positions in thread could be gained by considering the different senses of partial determination at work. Let's say that the kettle is boiling is true, what would the proximate cause of that expression's truth be? My intuition for that is that the kettle really did boil. I think @Banno, @Srap Tasmaner and @Michael would agree (though possibly for different reasons), though I suspect @Isaac would have a strong quibble.

( 1 ) A total determination of the referent "the kettle" by the underlying collective standards of interpretation.
( 2 ) A partial determination of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards.
( 3 ) No dependence of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards.

By the looks of it, no one here is arguing that ( 3 ) is true and no one here is arguing that ( 1 ) is true. (@Michael, correct me if I'm wrong). — fdrake

From the argument here:

a. The meaning of the sentence at T₁ is the meaning of the sentence at T₂
b. The truth value of the sentence at T₁ is the not the truth value of the sentence at T₂
c. Therefore, the truth value of the sentence is determined by something other than (even if in addition to) the meaning of the sentence
d. The only other thing that differs at T₂ is a material object
e. Therefore, the truth value of the sentence is determined by (even if only in part) that material object

I think the argument is valid and that the conclusion refutes (3) and is consistent with (1) and (2). It might not be clear which material object(s) determine (even if only in part) the truth of the sentence, but it is still the case that it is some material object(s) which determine (even if only in part) the truth of the sentence.

This is a criticism of Davidson's version. Supposedly Godel's is the best, but I haven't looked at it.

I might add the obvious point that 'the Earth moves" is both a belief about the Earth and a methodological maxim. It is a belief that will determine the experiments one does.

Beliefs just are "ways of conceptualising and intervening in particular situations". Meaning as use.

I'm not familiar with Joseph Rouse, but you and he seem to have in common the desire to juxtapose two things where there is only one.

— Banno

I would just add that if there is only ‘one thing, pragmatically useful belief, that one thing can’t be split up into a meaning of a belief on the one hand , and its actual contextual application on the other. There is only the one thing, the actual contextual sense.

Belief is not a rule or conceptual configuration that is taken intact from individual and cultural memory and which is subsequently ‘applied’, imported into a context of use. It is ONLY in the circumstances in which it is ‘actually used’ that the belief has sense, and those circumstances change constantly.

As Rouse writes:

“Understanding of conceptually articulated practices as subpatterns within the human lineage belongs to the Davidsonian-Sellarsian tradition that emphasizes the "objectivity" of conceptual understanding. Yet the "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself.“

You folk have been having fun haven't you?


Nice try, but there is a whole lot more going on here than just reference. Truth is about meaning, and meaning is best thought of as how language is used. So truth is about how language is used, and far wider than just reference.

It is worth pointing out, again, that the examples being used are far too limited to give us a feel for the way truth is used. I noticed as well that @Michael, and perhaps others, have returned to talk fo the colour of the kettle, rather than that it is boiling. This permits him to place undue emphasis on issues of perception. It's far easier to agree that the kettle is boiling than that the kettle is red. The examples chosen speak whole fora about the biases of the speaker.

A theory of truth that only works for material objects is insufficient. A theory of truth need to work for "The kettle is boiling", "The kettle is red", "The kettle is ugly", and "The kettle is symbolic of the role of women in a patriarchal system". It needs to explain why it is true that you stop at the red lights and why it is true that blue goes with red but not so much with brown. It needs to work for "It's true Banno is a bit of a bastard" as well as for "It's true that one ought to give to those less fortunate than oneself".

So there is the poverty of the correspondence theory. It only works in a limited number of cases.

I'll bold that, so those flicking past those post will at lease read it. I've made that point several times, and it hasn't been acknowledged, or was dismissed as too extreme.

In contrast, Tarski sets out in the first part of his 1933 article, a minimal criteria for an adequate theory of truth. It must set out, for every sentence S, some X such that "S" is true IFF X.

The task before us is to find X.

So, Srap, it's not just about reference.

The error I see in what @Michael proposes is that he thinks we can talk about the kettle outside of language. He needs a "non-linguistic kettle" to make his account work. It should be clear, to revert to Wittgenstein's terminology, that even pointing is engaging in a language game. Since the world is all that is the case, there is no escape from our language games.

It's also pretty clear that @Luke has a deep misunderstanding of what deflation consists in, since he conflates it with antirealism, supposing that it somehow denies that there are kettles. There's not much that can be said about such a view until he remedies himself.

For what it is worth, which I suspect is not much, I'll agree with your (1), (2) and (3), Srap, but my kettle is steel, not concretes, and metallic silver, not black nor red.

The interesting topic here is how @Isaac might fill out the hidden states he mentions in order to reach the intentional language of truth. My suspicion is that there is a gap brought about by there being a difference in kind between neural networks and truth statements. But you comments, Srap, about knowledge might point to a link, such that knowledge is about what we are able do in the world, and truth derives from our doing things with words.

But unfortunately we are stuck in this mire.

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. — Michael

I disagree.

Try instead thinking in terms of which acts are parts of a language game and which, if any, are not. The act of naming is clearly a language game. But so is any act involving the thing named. Putting the kettle on involves separating kettles from flames from water from cold from boiling. It is public, shared, even objective, to use a term that I disdain. To say that it is "not linguistic" is to miss the way in which all these things come together in the form of life that is boiling the kettle.

To engage with the kettle is to engage with what is the case and so with language.

Less prosaically, in order for there to be a kettle we undertake to treat the stuff around us - @Isaac's "hidden states" - as kettles and water and flames. This counts as a kettle; that counts as a flame, and that as water. Even those without language undertake in this fashion; but it is language that captures what is happening here. Seare has the better account of this.

In more Wittgensteinian terms, there is an active intent that makes the kettle a kettle. The kettle exists as a result of our treating it as such; which is not to deny that our intent is constrained, Isaac's hidden states. But it is constrained by the kettle; that seems to be what we have decided to call some of the hidden states.

So, @Isaac, perhaps those states are hidden from our neural nets, but not from us... :wink:

The referent of "the kettle" is a collectively enacted categorisation of the environment, rather than some environmental object. — fdrake

Yep.

What follows is speculative, but here goes.

( 1 ) A total determination of the referent of "the kettle" by the underlying collective standards of interpretation.
( 2 ) A partial determination of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards.
( 3 ) No dependence of the referent of "the kettle" by those same standards. — fdrake

Certainly that's the discussion that's been going on here, but it's not necessarily the right discussion.

Why language? I mean, yes, we are talking about how to understand using a phrase like "the kettle" or a sentence like "The kettle is boiling," yes. But think about this example. A kettle is an artifact, one of the oldest sorts of human artifacts, a vessel for cooking. What goes into the design and fashioning of a kettle is dependent on the needs and wishes of creatures like us, our specific, limited capacity for making things out of stuff, what stuff is available to us for making things, and so on.

I don't intend that list to be taken as endorsing a "forms of life" account. Rather, I want to say that the artifact here, the kettle, in some sense embeds an awful lot of referential understandings and gestures, almost none of which are linguistic. We wish to handle water in a certain way and craft vessels for doing so. There's reference there. How we fashion those vessels reflects, embeds, our understanding of the available materials in our environment -- more reference -- and our ability to work those materials into artifacts, and so on. The point being that in perceiving the kettle, we perceive a certain amount of the human history embedded in it, because by its nature it presents several ways in which creatures like us interact with the sorts of things we find, or choose to find, in the sorts of environments we live in. There is, in the kettle itself, evidence of reference to objects and materials in our environment.

On our side, to perceive a kettle also has a referential aspect to it. To see that the kettle is on the kitchen table involves content in a propositional form, content that I have here expressed in English, but that young Wittgenstein might say is also expressed by the arrangement of the kettle and the table. I perceive the kettle and the table, objects, but I also perceive how they are arranged and that they are so arranged without putting that into language.

My complaint then would be that language is far from the only medium in which human beings express intentionality, and to chase our interaction with objects in our environment back to language alone is a mistake. Perception matters, knowledge matters, manipulation matters, and so on, and all of these bear on issues of reference because they are all inherently referential activities. The idea that a kettle is only a way we talk is patently ridiculous; to think that it is not entirely but primarily, or even largely a matter of how we talk is scarcely less so.

Again, the idea here is not to smear everything together as "our forms of life," but to note that there are different modalities of reference and there is reason to think they are not entirely independent. We do not agree on how to carve up the world with words arbitrarily, but in, shall we say, consultation with how we perceive the objects and materials in our environment, how we manipulate them, what we know about them from our individual and collective histories. Language is only one of a battery of intentional behaviors that make reference to our environment or are dependent upon such reference. To understand how reference works in language specifically, we probably ought to give some thought to the other modalities as well.

@fdrake, if you meant 'interpretation' somewhat broadly, there you go.

I take it that Banno has a similar position, but complicates the matter by saying that regardless of the saturation of such interpretations by the categories of language, those expressions nevertheless refer to the kettle because they refer to the kettle in the pragmatic context of the phrase. The environment itself is part of the pragmatic context, and so is the appropriate court of evaluation for statements. You don't have to care about adding molecules to the kettle and severing the reference mechanism of "the kettle" to the kettle, because the necessary enmeshment of world and language is part of how reference works. You can see the expression "the kettle is boiling" both as a string and as what it is used to denote in context. A match between what is referred to, and the properties ascribed to it, and what it denotes in context is a truth, and it says no more to say something is true than this match actually occurring. — fdrake

Seems about right. Thank you.

Let's say that the kettle is boiling is true, what would the proximate cause of that expression's truth be? — fdrake

I'd quibble as to the word "cause" here. But I might go so far as to say that the exact circumstance in which it is correct to deem that "the kettle is boiling" is true are that the kettle is boiling...

I would just add that if there is only ‘one thing, pragmatically useful belief, that one thing can’t be split up into a meaning of a belief on the one hand , and its actual contextual application on the other. There is only the one thing, the actual contextual sense. — Joshs

Belief just is actual contextual application. Language is an actual contextual application.

Trouble is you would also have to agree that "snow is white" is true because the kettle is boiling.

The idea that a kettle is only a way we talk is patently ridiculous; to think that it is not entirely but primarily, or even largely a matter of how we talk is scarcely less so. — Srap Tasmaner

Lovely.

Michael Trouble is you would also have to agree that "snow is white" is true because the kettle is boiling. — Banno

Exactly.

Trouble is you would also have to agree that "snow is white" is true because the kettle is boiling. — Banno

I don’t. Both “the kettle is black” and “the kettle is metal” refer to the same kettle but it doesn’t follow from this that the kettle is black because the kettle is metal.

What's that got to do with the slingshot?

You like the substitution issues of T-sentences. Apply that here.

Not at all. Just like a 'race' is any kind of activity which has a start, a finish, and some competitive element, a 'belief that the pub is at the end of the road' is any mental arrangement which results in a tendency to go to the end of the road when wanting to get to the pub. — Isaac

I don't see your point. You weren't talking about a race, or any other form of activity, in the passage where I took the quote. You were talking about "states", specifically "hidden states". A state is not an activity, like a race is, and that's the point I made. What constitutes a state is incompatible with what constitutes an activity. So I don't see why you'd be trying to change the subject from "states" to "activities". Saying a state is like an activity is comparing apples to oranges.

So truth is about how language is used, and far wider than just reference. — Banno

We're getting closer and closer to agreement. All you need to do now is to acknowledge that truth is about nothing other than the honest use of language, and we'd be in agreement.

Since the world is all that is the case, there is no escape from our language games. — Banno

Sure, there is no escape from our language games, but there is such a thing as cheating. Why is cheating a reality in this world which only consists of what is the case? A dishonest statement, eg. a lie, has a real place in the world, just like cheating has a real place in a game.

But I might go so far as to say that the exact circumstance in which it is correct to deem that "the kettle is boiling" is true are that the kettle is boiling... — Banno

You say, truth is about meaning, but here you demonstrate otherwise. You are not saying anything about meaning here. You are saying that "the kettle is boiling", if true, means that the kettle is boiling. Can't you see that this says absolutely nothing about the meaning of "the kettle is boiling".

If you would make the slight adjustment, and say, that the exact circumstances in which it is correct to deem that "the kettle is boiling" is true, are when you honestly belief that the kettle is boiling, then you'd actually be saying something reasonable, and realistic about "truth", and consequently, about meaning as well. The correct circumstances in which to deem "the kettle is boiling" is true. is when you honestly believe that the kettle is boiling.

What's that got to do with the slingshot? — Banno

That’s my understanding of the slingshot. All it says is that all true sentences refer to the same world, just as all true sentences about the kettle refer to the same kettle. It doesn’t follow from the latter that the kettle is black iff the kettle is metal and so it doesn’t follow from the former that the kettle is black iff snow is white.

But if my understanding of the slingshot is incorrect then I think Tate’s link is a good response. “Clark Kent” refers to Superman but it doesn’t follow from this that if Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent is Clark Kent that she knows that Clark Kent is Superman. Davidson is wrong in asserting that co-referring terms are logically equivalent.

“Clark Kent” refers to Superman but it doesn’t follow from this that if Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent is Clark Kent that she knows that Clark Kent is Superman. Davidson is wrong in asserting that co-referring terms are logically equivalent. — Michael

Whether one co-referring term can be substituted for another is the canonical way of distinguishing extensional from intensional contexts. You can substitute salva veritate in extensional contexts but not in intensional ones.

Does this have anything at all to do with the slingshot? (Been a while since I thought about it.)