I felt compelled to fill in the blanks because you were so vague. — whollyrolling

What did you see as vague?

why don't you point out some of the dirt poor, destitute, starving, uneducated and socially outcast philosophers you speak of? — whollyrolling

Reading comprehension 101: where did I speak of that?

<wondering what whollyrolling got on his SAT>

I think that is hypocritical. — Devans99

Not surprising that you'd think that.

That's just BS. I have addressed all your counter arguments. — Devans99

No, you haven't. You do a combo of just plowing ahead without understanding and just ignoring, then repeating a script like a mantra.

Then you start another thread where you repeat the same idiocy yet again. You're as OCDish as the antinatalists in that.

I can show time has a start — Devans99

No, you can't. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again I show the problems with your idiotic arguments. You're incapable of learning.

Even this response is completely idiotic. I just explained that there can't be a "creator" that's aside from spacetime. It's incoherent.

Spacetime was created 14 billion years ago. — Devans99

All we know is that the big bang appears to have occurred about that time, if our theories are correct. That doesn't amount to spacetime being created then, or at any time. We have no idea about that.

Spacetime can't be created by something not of spacetime. The idea of that is incoherent. Space doesn't exist "in itself." It's not itself a thing. (And the same with time.) It supervenes on matter/the relations between matter. Space doesn't occur without time.

I propose that all "philosophy" has hitherto been an evolution of specialized language predicated on fortifying a master-slave relationship between the educated and the uneducated. — whollyrolling

If so, you'd think that philosophers would have better social status and make more money. Obviously something in our Bond-villain plan wasn't thought through very well.

No. Because nothing can be non-material. The notion of non-material things is incoherent.

Nothing can be apart from spacetime, either.

If you came across a group of folk who used "cat" to only refer to what most of us call "dogs," — Banno

Why a group, though? Wouldn't an individual be sufficient?

I'm lost here because I am not sure what "the relation in question" is. — Banno

Aside from the fact that I've explained my truth theory a bunch of times in different threads here, the post you're responding to explains that it's "a judgment about that meaning [of a proposition] and its relationship to something else." The something else, as I've explained many times, depends on the truth theory the individual in question adheres to (at least on the occasion in question). It can be correspondence to some state of affairs, coherence with some set of propositions, etc.

My suspicion is that for you truth and belief are pretty much the same, and hence, since opinion is subjective and belief is opinion, that truth is opinion and hence truth is subjective...

But I might be wrong. — Banno

How about reading the posts that you're responding to? That gives you the answer instead of having to make stuff up. If you don't understand what I write, I'd be happy to explain it to you if you'd a bit more humbly/respectfully inquire about it rather than wanting to argue with it and "win" despite it being obvious that you're not absorbing what I'm writing.

While it is true that some philosophers use these meanings, I think it causes more fog than clarity. — Banno

What would be an example or two of that (of it "causing more fog than clarity") in your view?

So, if meaning is not objective, it is subjective, a question of taste or opinion. — Banno

If this is the sort of fog you're referring to, it's simply a matter of you not being able to read what I'm writing with a definition that I just made explicit and that you even commented on. That's not something problematic with the definition. The problem is the inability to remember and apply the definition in context. I'm not saying anything like "meaning is just a question of taste or opinion."

Moreover, if meaning is a metal phenomena, then it happens in each mind, independently; and you and I can never talk about the very same thing. — Banno

We can never have the very same meaning. That's the case even if meaning is objective, insofar as our individual relationships (perception if it's objective, cognition, use, etc.), our individual interactions with it would go. This doesn't imply that we can't talk about the same thing. Our pointing is not identical to what we're pointing to. Meaning would be our pointing--our individual fingers. And indeed, you and I can not have the same fingers. But what we're pointing to can be the same thing.

That strikes me as wrong. Meaning is shared. Indeed, I think it better not to talk about meaning at all, but instead to look at what is being done with the sharing of words. Sentences (propositions, for Terrapin) are not mere mental phenomena. — Banno

"Meaning is shared" is what is wrong. No mental phenomena are literally shared in any sense. We share words in the "show and tell sense," yes. We don't share words in the "My word is literally, logically identical to your word" sense--which is a matter of what side we take in the nominalism vs. "realism" (realism on universals/types in other words) debate. I'm a nominalist. Maybe you're a realist (on universals) . . . and that would be a worthwhile thing for us to talk about in a different thread, rather than us starting so many threads where we wind up talking about the same handful of things over and over.

Sentences, as text strings, ordered sound waves, etc. are not mental phenomena. Propositions, which are NOT identical to sentences, are mental phenomena, because propositions are the meanings of the sentences that can be true or false. (Propositions are not the meanings of other sorts of sentences.)

There are good reasons in analytic philosophy for all of these distinctions (sentences vs statements vs propositions, etc.) Simply not wanting to learn them doesn't help you understand any of this stuff.

No, because that's just what meaning, generally speaking, is. — S

That's just another way of trying to sneak an argumentum ad populum in the back door. Argumentum ad populums are fallacious. Things that most people say or do are only relevant to the question of "What do most people say or do?" There's no other implication to it.

It's an objective truth in the relevant sense. — S

What's the relevant sense? "A truth about an objective state of affairs"? If that's what we're saying it's fine, but we need to be careful with how we're talking, because usually <adjective><noun> implies that the adjective is a property of the noun. For example "cotton shirt"--that implies that the shirt has the property of being made out of cotton. So we shouldn't be surprised when someone reads "objective truth" so that we're claiming that truth can have the property of being objective. But truth can't have that property. However, if "objective truth" is a loose way of saying "A truth about an objective state of affairs" that's fine . . . it's just a bit sloppy linguistically for doing philosophy.

Duplicate

You're not following what I'm saying.

You brought up the following above: "the fact that we're talking about god, unspecified, means that we're talking about god, broadly, as per a number of possible conceptions, one of which is an undetectable god."

Is that identical to simply saying "It's logically possible," or is that something different than simply saying "it's logically possible"?

Lol, you can only know that you believe something, empirically. — Harry Hindu

I'm not saying anything like that. Knowing that P in no way hinges on P being provable.

Yes, because the fact that we're talking about god, unspecified, means that we're talking about god, broadly, as per a number of possible conceptions, one of which is an undetectable god. The actual existence of a god as per that particular conception is what you'd have to rule out as impossible. — S

Wouldn't these be factors in addition to logical possibility?

Nothing other than the logical possibility of an undetectable god is required to justify the claim that you aren't justified in claiming that you know that god, unspecified, exists. — S

Okay. Is something other than the logical possibility of a necessarily detectable god required to justify the claim that you are justified in claiming that you know that god, unspecified, doesn't exist?

Either logical possibility is sufficient to justify a claim or it isn't. If something else is required--so that there are some cases where it's justified and other cases where it's not, then logical possibility isn't actually sufficient. Something else is required. "Sufficient" means that nothing else is required.

Alright, this is confusing me. — YuZhonglu

That's good. The whole point is to get you thinking. Settling back on a prepared statement isn't going to do that.

If you agree that we can point at something that isn't our finger--even though we HAVE to use our finger to do that, then why can't you agree that we can use a concept to point at something that's not itself the concept? Sure, we have to use a concept to do it, just like we have to use our finger to point, but the idea of reference is that we can point to something that's different than the thing making the reference.

Anytime you use a concept, you're referring to that concept. — YuZhonglu

So why isn't it the case that anytime you use a finger, you're referring to (pointing at) that finger?

Yes, you can point at things other than your finger. How does that relate to this debate? — YuZhonglu

So that we use a concept to refer to something doesn't imply that we're referring to a concept, does it?

It's just like using a finger to point. We use a finger to point at something that's not a finger.

We use a concept (and language in general) to point at something that's not a concept (not language).

Noting that we have to use a concept/language to point at the thing in question is like noting that we need to use a finger to point at something.

We can only point at things that we can observe and interpret through our brain. — YuZhonglu

The question I asked you is if we can point at something other than our finger. What's the answer to that question?

You can't reference something unless your brain believes it exists. Does a "state of affairs" exist outside of us? Maybe. But any claims about it are generated by a human brain. — YuZhonglu

You can't literally point at something without a finger, right? Does that mean that we can only point at our finger?

Because you used the word "position."

That's a concept generated by the human brain. — YuZhonglu

Do you not understand what reference is? You're confusing pointing with what we're pointing to.

Concepts of position requires sensory perceptions. — YuZhonglu

Why would you think that I'm referring to a concept per se?

My point was that logical possibility isn't sufficient to claim something. Why not? Because for the vast majority of things, if it's logically possible that P, then it's also logically possible that not-P. So if logical possibility is sufficient to claim something, then we regularly have to claim contradictions.

You disagreed and said that logical possibility is sufficient.

I don't get it then. — YuZhonglu

So, there are various ways that the world happens to be: I gave the example that a particular hydrogen atom will have a particular spatial relation to another particular hydrogen atom. Another example is that a given small rock on Mt. Denali will have a particular water content. Etc. These ways that the world happens to be are at a particular time--the rock's water content will change over time, for example, and from particular reference points--for example, the hydrogen atom might be to the right of the other from a particular reference point, but to the left from a reference point on the opposite side.

These ways that the world happens to be are known as "states of affairs," and it's common to use the term "fact" as another word for this.

Facts are what claims are about.

So what is your definition of "fact?" — YuZhonglu

You already asked that and I already answered it. The answer was: "Facts are states of affairs, ways that the world happens to be (at a given moment, from a particular reference point)."

No. I'm not using the term "fact" that way. And the way I'm using the term is standard in a lot of contexts, including philosophical and scientific contexts.

Yes, but the claim that this state of affairs exists cannot exist without a human brain. — YuZhonglu

Again, I'm not talking about claims.

For example, there's a state of affairs re the position of a particular hydrogen atom in Jupiter's atmosphere relative to a particular other hydrogen atom, at time Tx, from reference point Rp. That state of affairs is the sort of thing I'm calling a fact. Sentient beings and their brains need not apply. We're irrelevant to that fact obtaining.

However, this 'fact'- the claim that the Earth existed, etc. etc.- cannot exist without a brain to think it. — YuZhonglu

I'm not calling claims facts.

I'm calling states of affairs facts.

So the world wasn't in various states prior to the appearance of brains?

You're misquoting me, but there's nothing "airy" about that. The same thing will be different from different reference points, so it's worth specifying that.

Most facts have nothing at all to do with brains or people.

What would make that better?

Facts are states of affairs, ways that the world happens to be (at a given moment, from a particular reference point).

In my view, the vast majority of facts have nothing to do with experience, and facts are not permanent.

So if it's logically possible, and logical possibility is sufficient to justify a stance, then logical possibility is sufficient to justify both P and not-P, right? If not, why not?

(P and not-P in this case being "We do know that god, unspecified, doesn't exist," and "We don't know that god, unspecified, doesn't exist." )