Just like the fact that we all 'know' Aragorn was king of Gondor.
— Isaac
I used your example of '"Aragorn was king of Gondor" is true' to demonstrate this. That proposition is part of the "collective fiction" model and it's not possible that it could be false.
— Luke
I don't understand how it's not possible to be false. — Isaac
"Aragorn is the king of Mordor" is false. — Isaac
Why? You're connecting 'truth' to surprise but that's the very connection in question - the degree to which the truth of "the kettle is boiling" is connected to the hidden states that might surprise me. I'm not denying that hidden states can cause surprise I'm denying the link (or the strength of it) between them and the semantic content of a speech act such as "the kettle is boiling". — Isaac
I might have a model of my environment that I interact with and could be surprised by (if I get my predictions wrong, or fail to control it). — Isaac
Correspondence theory seems to want have it that our words somehow try to match that environment. I'm arguing that that's not what our words do. — Isaac
Truth is a property of statements, so the extent to which our words don't match an external world, is the extent to which the truth is unrelated to the external world. — Isaac
That a verb like "know" isn't factive.
One of my aims here has been to convince you to abandon the idea that the 'factive verbs' form a sui generis semantic or syntactic category. Perhaps there is some sui generis semantic or syntactic category of expressions that deserves the name 'factive verbs' or 'factive expressions', but the list that philosophers usually offer does not comprise such a category. I have made a case for denying that an utterance of "S knows p' is true only if p is true, i.e. that "knows" is factive. — Michael
I would rather take the inference rule as primary and say that our usage of "know" mostly, though imperfectly, follows that -- that this is the nature of knowledge -- rather than saying the inference rule rests on an analysis of how we use the word "knows." — Srap Tasmaner
That was one of my two options: At one time the person claimed to know p, but it turns out later that they did not know p. — Luke
And how did they "decide" this? — Luke
My understanding on the factivity of "know" is that you cannot know ~p where p is true. — Luke
Grice claims that conversational implicature is "triggered" by an apparent violation of a maxim of conversation, which suggests that what you mean by uttering p must be different from the plain meaning of p, in order to preserve the assumption that you are cooperative (and not after all violating a maxim). — Srap Tasmaner
That was one of my two options: At one time the person claimed to know p, but it turns out later that they did not know p.
— Luke
That's not what I said. — Metaphysician Undercover
What is correct, is that what is at one time called "knowledge", is at another time not allowed to be called knowledge. So the same ideas at one point in time qualify to be called "knowledge", yet at a later time are said not to be knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover
What I am saying is that p was a part of the person's knowledge at one time, and not-p was a part of the person's knowledge at another time, because knowledge changes. The person clearly knew p, as p may have played a significant role in the person's body of knowledge. So we clearly cannot change this to say that the person did not know p, because this would involve the contradictory conclusion that the knowledge possessed at the time was not really knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover
That p is true is a judgement. And of course, if one judges that p is true, then this person obviously does not know not-p. So, who is making the judgement that p is true in your example? — Metaphysician Undercover
Obviously it's not the person who knows not-p. — Metaphysician Undercover
You clearly refer to negative knowledge of p (i.e. ~Kp); not to positive knowledge of not-p (i.e. K~p). You say that it is not knowledge: "not allowed to be called knowledge", "said not to be knowledge". It is unreasonable to deny this; it is there in black and white. — Luke
It cannot be known that not-p is true if p is true, due to non-contradiction. This applies at any given time. — Luke
The same person or people making the judgment that p is true in your example. It makes no difference.
Obviously it's not the person who knows not-p.
— Metaphysician Undercover
Obviously not. Nobody can know that not-p is true if p is true. — Luke
Your use of "true" here is deceptive, because you do not disclose the person who is making the judgement that p is true. — Metaphysician Undercover
There is no judgement. It just either is or isn't true. — Michael
A proposition requires an interpretation and a comparison with what is the case, to be determined as either true or not true. — Metaphysician Undercover
If the world is the model, then there should be no surprises. — Luke
it is possibile that our model could be false in at least some respects, and that we could be surprised, because you speak of the possibility of a better model. — Luke
Since it is possible that our model could be false in at least some respects, and that we could be surprised, it follows that there is more to truth than a mere "collective fiction". — Luke
No, I'm saying that redundancy conflates the two. If "p is true" means no more than "p" and there is nothing "outside" language, then I don't see how it is possible for the fiction to fail in its task. — Luke
Philosophy is fun! — Srap Tasmaner
The sensibility of these scenarios proves the distinction between truth and judgement. — Michael
There is no judgement. — Michael
If two men disagree on whether or not something is the case.... — Michael
we determine the meaning..... — Michael
Our language use determines the meaning.... — Michael
Why should there be no surprises if the world is the model? — Isaac
Since it is possible that our model could be false in at least some respects, and that we could be surprised, it follows that there is more to truth than a mere "collective fiction".
— Luke
Only if you already beg the very question we're debating by assuming 'truth' refers to the hidden states that the model is of. — Isaac
No one is saying anything about there being 'nothing' outside of language, I don't know where you're getting this from. — Isaac
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. — Luke
Therefore, there are no boiling kettles outside of language, either?
— Luke
No. Language is what delineates 'kettle' as an object. Without it, there's just 'the stuff that kettles are drawn from'. — Isaac
You clearly misunderstood what I said. Or, as is often the case with you Luke, you intentionally misrepresented what I wrote. Whatever, I will repeat myself as usual. The same ideas which are knowledge at one time are not knowledge at another time. — Metaphysician Undercover
There should be no surprises if the world is the model because you claim that the model is a collective fiction. — Luke
I already answered the question of why there should be no surprises using your analogy with "Aragorn was king of Gondor". — Luke
Why should there be any surprises if the world is the model and the model is a collective fiction? — Luke
By that logic, you are also begging the question by assuming 'truth' does not refer to such hidden states. — Luke
You were one of those saying something "about there being 'nothing' outside of language". — Luke
there's just 'the stuff that kettles are drawn from'. — Isaac
You didn't say why there should be no surprises using my analogy with "Aragorn was king of Gondor". — Isaac
Because the hidden states the world is a collective model of may be modelled imperfectly. — Isaac
By that logic, you are also begging the question by assuming 'truth' does not refer to such hidden states.
— Luke
I'm not assuming though. That conclusion doesn't itself form part of my argument for it. — Isaac
Come on, at least the bare minimum of effort to fairly represent your interlocutors. It's literally written in the very quote you cited... — Isaac
Therefore, there are no boiling kettles outside of language, either?
— Luke
No. — Isaac
The boiling kettle can't be 'true' since there are no matters, outside of language, which could make it so. — Isaac
Because the hidden states the world is a collective model of may be modelled imperfectly. — Isaac
Because we could never be surprised to find that Aragorn was not king of Gondor, or that "Aragorn was king of Gondor" is false. Surely we know our collective fiction (which is the model, which is the world) in exactly the same way, and with the same level of surety, that we know Aragorn was king of Gondor. So, whence surprise? — Luke
I wouldn't have chosen to make the comparison with fiction, since although there is some sense to it, it will inevitably lead to misunderstanding. The boiling kettle before us is not a fiction. It is indeed a boiling kettle. that it is a boiling kettle is a result of the way it interacts with us and we with it and we with each other. The world is such that we, collectively, make sense of it.I see it a third way (if that's allowed). Our phenomena are private, so we can't have a public language referring to them. But appearances (hidden states) are inaccessible except via our models, so we can't have a language that's in a one to one correspondence with them either. So to what does the semantic content of expressions refer? My answer is that they refer to a collective fiction. an agreed on, shared model. Just like the fact that we all 'know' Aragorn was king of Gondor. We can talk about Aragorn and his goings on and be right/wrong about them. Kettles are like that. A collective story about the causes of the sensations we all experience, kept consistent by repeated joint activity and repeated joint language use. Which leads directly to... — Isaac
Since the world is all that is the case, it is also a collective story. That does not meant hat just anything goes. You will still burn your hand if you touch the boiling kettle.
The result is that some statements are true, some false — Banno
Yes.So then Davidsonian non-reductive physicalism rather than Putnam’s conceptual relativism? — Joshs
An incautious leap, don't you think, Joshs?And the moral implications are perhaps that , like the boiling kettle, there is a fact of the matter in social affairs preventing ethical debates from getting lost in interminable relativity? — Joshs
Since the world is all that is the case, it is also a collective story. That does not meant hat just anything goes. You will still burn your hand if you touch the boiling kettle. — Banno
Really? What is it about reality that you are scared of? :wink: — Banno
It would be an easy, yet baleful mistake if philosophers were to take the developments of neural science and simply interpret tham in Kantian terms. I suspect that this is what is happening here. — Banno
Yeah. I think there is a distinction between the two; the neural models interact with the kettle, the noumenon is either a limit on possible thought or a cognitive grasp of an object. I imagine our suspicions are the same! — fdrake
What do you see as being a significant difference between the "hidden states" that give rise to our models or collective representations, and the noumena that are represented as phenomena? — Janus
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.