OK, Banno.

You don't think there can be unproven truths?

And you don't want any critique of your views?

Ok, Alkis. That's one way to for you to have certainty.

An odd implication of holding that there are no unproven truths is that we know everything. How? Well, anything that is unproven is by that fact untrue - the proven facts are all the facts there are.

Fitch’s Paradox of Knowability

Yes, been there before, but it is relevant here.

Something is true, if you believe it to be true. — A Realist

Socrates in Disneyland...

Something is true, if you believe it to be true. — A Realist

If you believe that something is true, it doesn't mean that it is true in general, or also true for me or someone else ... (But I believe that it is true for you.)
:smile:

If you like, being true is what we do with felicitous statements; or "P" is true IFF P. — Banno

Given the expression "the bird is blue" is true IFF the bird is blue, "the bird is blue" exists in language, and the bird is blue exists in the world.

The question is, where does this world exist, in the mind or independent of the mind. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, para 1 "The world is everything that is the case", carefully avoided giving his understanding of where this world existed.

The answer to the question whether is it true that in the world the bird is blue first depends on deciding where this world exists.

Is it true that in a world independent of the mind there is a bird that is blue, or is it true that in the world in the mind there is a bird that is blue.

If there is a realist, metaphysical truth existing in a world independent of the mind, how can we discover this truth, given the inherent problem of trying to understand a world that is independent of the mind when all we have to understand this mind-independent world is the mind.

I observe a colour in the world and name it blue. The statement "the colour is blue" is then true because I have named the colour blue. Regardless of whether the world I have observed exists independently of my mind or exists in my mind, the statement "the colour is blue" is true. IE, "The colour is blue" is true IFF I have named the colour blue.

The problem remains, what mechanism will enable the mind to know what is true independent of the mind?

What does it mean to say that a statement is true?

Is it, as some assert, that a statement has the property of truth or is it that a statement is merely labelled as true?

The trouble with asserting that truth is a property of a statement is in finding a logical process by which the property of truth can be identified.(Tarski's artificial meta-system fails to answer this question.)

On the other side, if statements can only be labelled as 'true' by someone who considers that the statement conforms with the facts of the world as they see them or that it conforms with the axioms of a formal abstract system then the above-mentioned problem evaporates.

Then statements like' this statement is true' make no more sense than 'this statement is blue'. and statements like ' this statement is false' would no longer be problematic.

I would say a statement has the property of truth if it refers to/conforms to the world (specifically, the way things are at some time).

Related: Crispin Sartwell wrote a recent article, arguing one commonality between analytic and continental philosophers was their emphasis on language- the linguistic turn. He goes on to conclude that emphasis seems off, and even destructive, in a world where truth matters (of course, it has always mattered). His example is climate change. In general, I have noticed a shift. It used to be sexy to say things like, "Your truth is whatever you want it to be." I don't see much celebration of the malleability of truth anymore. I think the political landscape, at least in the US, has shown us how reckless those attitudes can be. At any rate, Sartwell:

"Any philosophy that seemed to undermine the reality of the natural world, or make it a malleable human artefact, has come to feel potentially destructive."

The post-linguistic turn

It doesn't matter if it's true for others, as long as you or I or him believe it to be true.
Besides of course tautologies and contradictions, and statements like "I am a Liar" which are by definition always true or always false.

As for Socrates I am not even sure he ever existed, perhaps he is/was a fictional character...'
What's the difference between fiction and reality in that case? it depends on what do you believe of course...

It doesn't matter if it's true for others, as long as you or I or him believe it to be true. — A Realist

Of course it doesn't matter. But please complete the sentence "As long as you or I or him believe it to be true ..." (Then what?)

"I am a Liar" which are by definition always true or always false. — A Realist

But this statement is neither true nor false! :smile: It's a known "paradox", or better, a self-contradictory statement. If I am a liar then this statement is a lie (false). But then, if this statement is a lie (false), it means that I'm not a liar. See the self-contradiction involved?

As for Socrates I am not even sure he ever existed, perhaps he is/was a fictional character...'. — A Realist

What have I to do with Socrates in this thread? :smile: Have you confound me with someone else?

The Socrates theme was a reply to Banno's DisneyLand YT film.

Anyways, the Liar paradox can also be regarded as both true and false.
As long as you or I or him believe something to be true, then it's true.

If you want to write it in Doxastic Logic's notation then it's: from Bp being true you can entail that p is true.

"This statement is a statement". Is this true? I think so

Naming is an event in Tarski's meta-language.

Tarski said that the truth of a statement cannot be found in an object language, but only in a metalanguage

Naming is extra-linguistic. For example, suppose I observe a colour in the world and name it "chekundu". As naming is extra-linguistic, naming is, in Tarski's terms, in a metalanguage. Once this colour has been named "chekundu", then the statement "this colour is chekundu" is true. The truth of the statement cannot be found in the object language itself, but in the act of naming, which is extra-linguistic, and part of a meta-language.