You are headed to absurdity, forced to conclude that the number of true additions is finite, since it is limited to only those that have been uttered. — Banno

I am saying that the number of true assertions that have been made is finite, that the number of false assertions that have been made is finite, that platonism is incorrect, and that using the adjectives "true" and "false" to describe something other than an assertion is either a category error or vacuous.

It ain't nonsense.

You just slide the goal from utterances to propositions to assertion:

You can't show that there are unuttered propositions by uttering a proposition. — Michael

You just slide the goal from utterances to propositions to assertion: — Banno

Yes, it makes no difference. Either way, platonism is wrong and truth- and falsehood-predication only makes sense when the object predicated as either true or false is a feature of language.

Either way, platonism is wrong and truth- and falsehood-predication only makes sense in the context of using language. — Michael

The vanity of small differences powers a thread such as this. I agree. But you are saying it wrong.

I want to take a couple more swipes at treating truth as a predicate.

1. Truth, or some equivalent or substitute, is prior to all the other predicates, underwrites them, and is necessary for doing things like defining their extensions as sets.

You can't define a sentence S as being true if the sentence "S is true" is true without circularity.

2. Intuitively, when you collect things with some property into a set, they're all there because they have something in common.

But if you try to collect true sentences, they each end up in the set for a different reason. "My car is red" goes in because my car is red. "I'm cooking pasta" goes in because I'm cooking pasta.

(I suspect the set of all and only true sentences is incoherent -- Liar? -- but I don't think we have to go there.)

But you are saying it wrong. — Banno

I don't think I am.

Take "there are unuttered propositions" which I compared to "there are unborn babies".

That there are unborn babies just is that new babies will be born in the future, and so that there are unuttered propositions just is that new propositions will be uttered in the future, consistent with everything I have been saying.

That you think that "there are unuttered propositions" is inconsistent with my position suggests that you are being led astray by the grammar of this sentence into thinking it entails something else – something that seems akin to platonism even though you don't seem to want to commit to platonism, which is why it is not clear to me what you are trying to say, and why I think you're falling victim to an unintentional equivocation caused by the imprecise use of the terms "true" and "truth" that I am trying to fix.

Just to be clear, Banno says that you can go either way, saying that the tree makes a noise and dealing with the consequences, or saying that it doesn't, and dealing with a different set of consequences. — Banno

Oh. Sorry for putting the wrong words in your mouth.

There are really two parts to this discussion.

The first concerns the dispute between platonism and conceptualism – are propositions mind-independent or not?

The second concerns the dispute between realism and anti-realism (as defined by Dummett) – is a proposition’s truth value verification-transcendent or not?

This leaves us with four possible positions:

Platonism + realism: there are mind-independent propositions with verification-transcendent truth conditions.

Conceptualism + realism: there are mind-dependent propositions with verification-transcendent truth-conditions.

Conceptualism + anti-realism: there are mind-dependent propositions with verification-immanent truth-conditions.

Platonism + anti-realism: there are mind-independent propositions with verification-immanent truth-conditions.

I’m not sure how sensible the last of these is, and so perhaps we can dismiss it for now.

Of the other three, only platonism + realism allows for anything that can be considered a “mind-independent truth”.

Now there is some ambiguity with the phrase “mind-independent truth”. On the one hand it might mean “a proposition that is mind-independent and true” and on the other hand it might mean “a proposition that is mind-independently true”.

The former is just platonism.

If the latter does not mean the former then it more accurately means “a proposition that is mind-dependent and mind-independently true”, which is conceptualism, and doesn’t really seem to satisfy the intention of the phrase “mind-independent truth”, and is why I have been arguing that either platonism is correct or there are no truths if there are no minds.

Note specifically that a proposition being mind-dependent does not entail that its truth value is mind-dependent, which I think is where @frank is making his mistake.

Note specifically that a proposition being mind-dependent does not entail that its truth value is mind-dependent, which I think is where frank is making his mistake. — Michael

My view of truth is Nietzschean. You might want to look more closely at what the SEP said about conceptualism because I don't think you're describing it correctly. Plus Soames' book on truth. You can't beat it.

Does that really address any of the issues? — Leontiskos

I doubt it does.

For example, how is the question about the metaphysical status of truth the same as the debates of representationalism?

It isn't generically. It's effectively the same in this thread. You've got a sentence content, you've got a fact, there's a bridge, and the fact and the sentence content are somehow the same thing when the sentence is true. The correspondence mechanism ( or merely incidental matching ) works a bit like a mirror, so the bridge is a mirror. If you'll let me put it briefly with an analogy, we're arguing over whether the mirror has one side or two.

When you move to a world where there are no humans, the bridge breaks.

Someone might claim that there is no mirror, and that the sentence content just somehow "is" the fact, or that the truth is an unanalyzable primitive and we're just talking shite doing all this. Nevertheless in all the cases the world resembles the sentences said about it in a manner that the world will be different if a sentence turns out to be true or false, and in a "precise" manner.

Again with the analogy, the mirror makes that precision exact - the picture is perfect both ways.

What makes me think of it like representation is that you've got the same separation/binding dichotomy working between X and what counts as X, being the fact and the true sentence or the represented and its representation in both cases.

And I don't see anyone disputing the idea that "there are mutual constraints of world and word." — Leontiskos

No, no one is disputing it directly. If I parse the issue like I do above, the correspondence mechanism works like a preservation of content between sentence and fact, they're somehow equivalent. Like if I say "my bottle is 1m along and 30cm forward on my table", that's... where the bottle is. The sentence is true. But it's not quite right, the bottle's an extended object with an ill defined centre, I eyeballed the distances, the table's a shitty IKEA one with a little bend in it... The richness of the world exceeds what you'd expect of if it was exact match, nevertheless the sentence says something right about the table and the bottle

So I don't think that {"my bottle is 1m along and 30cm forward on my table" is true} corresponds to anything, or "displays" a unique matter of fact at all, I think there's a fairly nebulous range of stuff that makes that sentence count as true. But given that you know the sentence is true, it tells you something about the contours of ambiguity. Like the bottle can't be on my ceiling or my lap. But it might be 30.005cm forward.

Which then raises a lot of questions about how a connection like that between the truth of the sentence and the bottle's weird position can be negotiated - and I honestly don't know the details. My intuitions are Sellarsian, and I enjoy Dennett's view of coordinating perceptions with utterances which is pretty similar. Suffice to say I think that the connection is norm mediated, and "is true" means something similar to "is correctly assertible".

With the above account (sketch), the thing which makes me believe it renders our discussion a pseudoproblem is that the interstice between sentences and facts is entirely conventional and doesn't "preserve" anything. We just make conventions of descriptions that try to ensure when people say stuff is blah the stuff counts as blah. That "counts as blah" is the important thing.

Because I believe it's correctly assertible that there were, say, dinosaurs in the world before there were humans. Or if humans never evolved in some world, that world would still have had dinosaurs, all else being equal to ours. And that doesn't bottom out in correspondence to some underlying reality, it bottoms out in something like: "radiocarbon dating has shown dinosaurs existed long before humans" and "the ice age could easily have killed us all" - good reasons for accepting it. Even if those things turn out false, it's still more reasons. But reasons about what is {or what counts as what is :D}.

So roughly, I don't think sentences "bear" truth in the sense required for this debate. It's the norms of use, and we coordinate those by using them in circumstances, and they leave a lot imprecise and unsaid.

Do you deny that some animals other than humans, as well as some predating humans have(form, have, and/or hold)belief?

When you move to a world where there are no humans, the bridge breaks. — fdrake

Indeed. Such is one consequence of conflating belief statements with all belief.

So roughly, I don't think sentences "bear" truth in the sense required for this debate. It's the norms of use, and we coordinate those by using them in circumstances, and they leave a lot imprecise and unsaid. — fdrake

I want to have my cake and eat it though.

I have considerable sympathy for all of this, but I'm not convinced it's the whole story.

I think we can recognize precision and explicitness as thresholds that are negotiated, without idealizing them into unreachable and thus useless perfection. We say enough to be understood, counting on the audience to fill in as much as they need to to get it, and even that can be negotiated.

But that just kills off an unrealistic picture of how conversation works. Even if your speech doesn't have to carry the burden of truth entirely on its own, it has to do its part.

I keep finding myself thinking that the great value of saying something true to someone else is helping them see it ― like when you point out to someone that a photo of the faculty of your department has no women in it. And it's not just a matter of your words being understood and even credited; if I lie to you convincingly, my words hide the world from you, obstruct and undermine your relationship with it, divert your attention into a shadowy fantasy land. But when I tell you the truth, and you see it, my words fall away.

So I don't think norms and assertibility and all that are the whole story. I think even if sentences don't carry truth like a payload, they still ought to be truth-directed and truth-directing.

You just let the meaning of the sentence be its truth conditions (per Davidson).

I think even if sentences don't carry truth like a payload, they still ought to be truth-directed and truth-directing. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah I agree with that. Truth (as a concept) definitely seems to play a privileged coordinating role, even if you grant that it's all coordinating norms. There's a fixity to it there isn't to justification. If something counts as true, it counts as something that can be posited without evidence - accepted for what it is. But then you can have a discussion about whether something is true, which seems to be a discussion which leverages the relevant coordinating norms regarding it particularly intensely - it examines them, and enacts what it means to be a coordinating norm to begin with. So when you say:

I keep finding myself thinking that the great value of saying something true to someone else is helping them see it ― like when you point out to someone that a photo of the faculty of your department has no women in it. — Srap Tasmaner

I think that's very true, when you say something is true, it's a kind of... commitment... but it's not just a personal pledge. It's a pledge you make on behalf of the relevant norms, "see, this is part of that, look at its state". And then you either accept or reject the claim.

I think even if sentences don't carry truth like a payload, they still ought to be truth-directed and truth-directing. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah. Truth as a process. It's quite Peircian! Infinitism type stuff.

That there are unborn babies just is that new babies will be born in the future, and so that there are unuttered propositions just is that new propositions will be uttered in the future, consistent with everything I have been saying. — Michael

Sure. But there are only a finite number of unborns. There are infinite additions. So, again, if only those additions that have been uttered are true, you are short on additions. By quite a bit. You might decide now to change your argument to those additions that are utterable, rather than just uttered, but that would undermine your contention that it is assertions that are true or false - you are now talking about possible assertions.

Truth as a process. — fdrake

That might be, in a human-finitude sort of way. But I was saying something stronger: we don't so much tell the truth as reveal it, or at least do our part in revealing it. Here's that metaphor taken literally: there is a curtain hiding the facts; I pull it back on my side so that you can begin to see what's behind it, and if you pull the rest on your side, things as they are stand revealed. ― Now, maybe it's best to admit we never quite get the curtain pulled all the way clear, maybe in fact all we get are glimpses now and then when we manage a gap in the curtains, but those glimpses are real and what we see and understand is reality to that degree revealed.

Truth (as a concept) definitely seems to play a privileged coordinating role, even if you grant that it's all coordinating norms. — fdrake

Here too, I want to say something stronger. Or at least I want to make sure the norms in play aren't just matters of what we say and do ― the way these things usually cash out ― but in what we think and believe and know.

Whenever I speak to you, I invite you to see through my eyes, to see things as I see them, and that's so whether how I see things is accurate or not. It's the same when I understand you, which I can do even when I think you're wrong, I can see how you see things. But when I see more of the truth than you and I share that, where we want to end up is that your eyes are just fine, you just have to look where I'm looking and attend to what I'm attending to. ― Maybe that's a matter of deeply shared cognitive norms, at some community or even species level, I don't know.

The thing about truth is that perspective ― "No, stand over here and look. See?" ― may be necessary, in at least some circumstances, to get to it, but truth is never truth only from a particular perspective. Once you've bent down and looked from the right angle to understand how the thing works, you can stand back up. If you would have to be me or think like me to get it, we must be talking about an idea of mine rather than truth. So it is that at most you borrow my eyes, look through them just for a moment, and understand there was nothing special about my eyes anyway. It's not even unusual for you to "what's more ..." me. I was in a better position to see than you and I still missed something.

Alright, I'm beating this to death, which is too bad because I think there are limitations to the seeing business, and very often what we really need and share with each other is narrative.

Interesting. We pick out things using constants, and we say things about them using predicates. I don't see a problem with treating truth as a predicate over sentences, if we do it with care.

I'm not too sure of (1), in that we can specify the structure of, say, a first order logic in a few steps, and without mentioning that these steps are true - that is kinda taken as granted. But the general point, that our utterances are usually to be understood as being true, stands - only it remains that this takes "...is true" as a predicate over utterances.

It seems to me that "S is true" does define (or commit us to) S being true, and without circularity. I gather you are thinking along the lines of what the Hare asked Achilles. The answer is, it's just what we do; we treat "S is true", "S is true" is true, '"S is true" is true' is true, as read, and just get on with it.

(2) doesn't much count in extensional contexts, but we might fall back on relevance logic. That could be interesting. What they have in common is that they are true... Is that circularity vicious? or jsut a harmless recursion?

The set of true sentences should be coherent, as in consistent, for whatever version of consistency is being used; but it can't be complete. We can kinda infer this from Gödel.

Intersting thoughts, though.

Sorry for putting the wrong words in your mouth. — fdrake

No worries.

Yep, great illustrations. I like the way you pressed that line.

(Coming back to this thread when I have more time...)

But I was saying something stronger: we don't so much tell the truth as reveal it, or at least do our part in revealing it. Here's that metaphor taken literally: there is a curtain hiding the facts; I pull it back on my side so that you can begin to see what's behind it, and if you pull the rest on your side, things as they are stand revealed. ― Now, maybe it's best to admit we never quite get the curtain pulled all the way clear, maybe in fact all we get are glimpses now and then when we manage a gap in the curtains, but those glimpses are real and what we see and understand is reality to that degree revealed. — Srap Tasmaner

Alright, I'm beating this to death, which is too bad because I think there are limitations to the seeing business, and very often what we really need and share with each other is narrative, — Srap Tasmaner

I see what you mean about the seeing. It's something like a stratum of human behaviour which does the revealing, isn't it? And it's inflected by norms but not totally determined by them. I think what draws me to Sellars on the matter is that utterances are of the same ontological order as literally pulling back curtains. The coupling occurs not because there's one ontological regime over here (language) and one over there (world), there was only ever "world and world", but bubbling up representationally through coordinating behaviours.

but it truth is never truth only from a particular perspective. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. I agree. When someone makes an assertion which claims something is true explicitly, rather than taking it for granted, that deposits what is purported into a crucible of collective behaviour and all the stuff that happens. The claim counting as true in other circumstances is quite different from it being true when it gets deposited in the crucible.

We have an incredible ability to coordinate our behaviour in a manner that depends upon no one in particular (intersubjectivity) but also based upon what no one's done yet (like your maths examples), and through the latter it becomes possible (maybe even correct) to treat truth as mind independent - as it won't matter who says what when, even before humans existed. Because gold existed in the time before humans. That ability to defer to the coordinating norms makes language work well in excess of our current and past enactment of it - as every norm is an expectation, and expectations concern arbitrary states of affairs.

This is a tangent on your tangent, my impression is that philosophical discussions rarely give more than lipservice to the distinction between different uses of truth, or people's behaviour when we claim something is true vs when we claim something. Counting as true and being true get equated, despite being quite different in terms of norms - something can count as true just when it's assumed, believed, intended, hoped for, posited... whatevs. Something counts as being true when... well when it really is the case. Which, as far as language use goes, is when it's correct to assert - and the correctness conditions include the ability to reference all the events and stuff which might "reveal" the truth, as you say.

The first concerns the dispute between platonism and conceptualism – are propositions mind-independent or not? — Michael

And so the issue is forced into a juxtaposition. Better to ask how propositions are dependent on mind, and how they are dependent on the world.

is a proposition’s truth value verification-transcendent or not? — Michael

Which proposition? Why assume there to be one answer for all propositions? Better to ask which propositions are verification-transcendent (a dreadful phrase), an even better to ask what verification is.

There are infinite additions. — Banno

Are you arguing for mathematical platonism, or are you arguing for a non-platonic interpretation of "there are an infinite number of true additions and false additions that we could write out"?

Because I don't believe in mathematical platonism.

Returning back to my diagrams:



There are an infinite number of quoted mathematical equations that we could write out inside the World A circle, and in writing them out they are either blue (true) or red (false), but none that we can write out inside the World B circle because there's nobody in that world to assert them. Which is why there are mathematical truths and falsehoods in World A but no mathematical truths or falsehoods in World B.

This is where the platonist disagrees; he would argue that there are an infinite number of blue and red mathematical equations that we could write inside the World B circle even though there's nobody in that world to assert them.

So please clarify your position on this. Is it sensible to write out red and blue mathematical equations inside the World B circle?

And so the issue is forced into a juxtaposition. Better to ask how propositions are dependent on mind — Banno

Given that the crux of the recent debate is over whether or not there are truths (true propositions) without minds, it's an appropriate juxtaposition.

If there are truths without minds then propositions are mind-independent (platonism).
If propositions are mind-dependent (conceptualism) then there are no truths without minds.

In general there are four different positions on the topic, paraphrased from here:

1. Platonism - there are mind-independent and particular-independent abstract objects
2. Immanent realism - there are mind-independent and particular-dependent abstract objects
3. Conceptualism - there are mind-dependent abstract objects
4. Nominalism - there are no abstract objects

With respect to propositions, I think immanent realism collapses into conceptualism (propositions are particular-dependent, i.e. dependent on meaningful utterances, and meaningful utterances are mind-dependent), giving us three options:

1. Propositions are mind-independent
2. Propositions are mind-dependent
3. There are no propositions

(1) and (2) will argue that truth is a property of propositions, (3) that truth is a property of utterances.
(1) allows for true propositions (truths) without minds, (2) and (3) only for true propositions (truths) with minds.

I reject platonism. I'm undecided on nominalism and conceptualism, but the things I am saying are consistent with both.

There are an infinite number of quoted mathematical equations that we could write out inside the World A circle, — Michael

That was the point from before though, switching from asserted to assertible, or stated to statable, changes lots of things. There's an infinite number of quotable mathematical equations that you could write, but only a finite numbed of quoted mathematical equations which have been written. You can prove that there's an infinity of true equations like this:

The equation n+(n+1)=2n+1 is an equation, left hand side is right hand side, so " n+(n+1)=2n+1 " is true. But the set of all such equations bijects with the input set - every input has a unique output. In particular it's true for all the natural numbers, so that's an infinity of true equations. All but finitely many have never been written.

But you know they're all true. Even the unwritten ones. Since they satisfy the equation n+(n+1)=2n+1.

But you know they're all true. Even the unwritten ones. Since they satisfy the equation n+(n+1)=2n+1. — fdrake

Firstly, I don’t think that n+(n+1)=2n+1 proves mathematical platonism.

Secondly, what is true? The equation? What is an equation? Is it a meaningful string of symbols?

This is where I think the grammar is causing confusion. There is both a platonist and a non-platonist interpretation of "there are unwritten equations".

As an analogy, consider something like "there are unpainted red paintings". It's certainly true in the non-platonic sense that someone could paint a red painting that doesn't exist in the present, but it's not true in the platonic sense that there exists in the present some painting that is red but unpainted.

And so "there are unwritten true equations" is true in the non-platonic sense that someone could write a true equation that doesn't exist in the present, but it's not true in the platonic sense that there exists in the present some equation that is true but unwritten.

With respect to propositions, I think immanent realism collapses into conceptualism — Michael

I'm not sure how. Note the SEP article you cited says of this kind of conceptualism: "As we will see below, this view has serious problems and not very many people endorse it."

I reject platonism. I'm undecided on nominalism and conceptualism, but the things I am saying are consistent with both. — Michael

That's cool. This is the indispensability argument from Quine:

"According to this line of argument, reference to (or quantification over) mathematical entities such as sets, numbers, functions and such is indispensable to our best scientific theories, and so we ought to be committed to the existence of these mathematical entities. To do otherwise is to be guilty of what Putnam has called “intellectual dishonesty” (Putnam 1979b, p. 347)." here

Propositions are also indispensable to folk theories about agreement. Soames lays this out in his book on truth. I think you'd find the argument intriguing.

However you handle abstract objects, you need to look at the consequences of your approach to avoid contradiction.

I think immanent realism collapses into conceptualism — Michael

I'm not sure how. — frank

Because the immanent realist believes that "properties like redness exist only in the physical world, in particular, in actual red things."

An immanent realist about propositions would have to believe that propositions exist only in particular things, and presumably the only particular things within which a proposition can exist is an utterance. But a sound is only an utterance if there is a mind to interpret the sound as an utterance. And so it's not clear how immanent realism about propositions can be distinguished from conceptualism about propositions.

Hence it seems that with respect to propositions we must be platonists (mind-independent propositions), conceptualists (mind-dependent propositions), or nominalists (no propositions).

Only platonism allows for something that can putatively count as a mind-independent truth, and I think that platonism about propositions is more problematic than the alternatives, most likely because I think that physicalism or property dualism is more parsimonious than the theory that there is the physical, the mental, and the independently abstract.

An immanent realist about propositions would have to believe that propositions exist only in particular things, and presumably the only particular things within which a proposition can exist is an utterance. — Michael

A proposition is the meaning of an uttered sentence. So this would be saying that the meaning of 2 is a prime number resides in the pixels on the screen. That doesn't make any sense to me, but if you like it, just pay attention to the consequences. For instance, what does it mean if you and I agree that 2 is a prime number? What is it that we're both agreeing to? Pixels?

Hence it seems that with respect to propositions we must be platonists (mind-independent propositions), — Michael

Right. Just look at Quine's indispensability argument in the SEP article I cited. Just be aware of what you're giving up if you reject mathematical realism.

Just be aware of what you're giving up if you reject mathematical realism. — frank

I’d be giving up on mind-independent abstract objects, which is of no concern.

Just look at Quine's indispensability argument in the SEP article I cited. — frank

And perhaps you could look at the epistemological argument against platonism.