So what? If it's something we can't know, who cares? — Srap Tasmaner

may of the things ppl car emost deeply about are things they don't have any way of figuring out. so in answer to your question, everyone

i mean just a beyond obvious example, we have no way of figuring out if the abrahamic god exists (let's say), but the matter is of extreme importance for one's fate after death

i demonstrate by example; you think no more clearly about 'the whole' for having studied philosophy, nor has anyone i'm aware of.

yes, we recognize that 'it's raining' is true iff it's raining. this has nothing to do with verification.

but it can help you see things aright. — Agustino

no it can't.

That it's raining if it's raining isn't inconsistent with the claim that "it's raining" must have recognisable truth conditions for it to be mean something. — Michael

what are the truth conditions for "it's raining?" surely this is true iff it's raining. but as we just agreed, it's raining iff water is falling from the sky, and as we just showed, this has nothing to do with verification.

no, you don't stop thinking, you go study whatever it is you want to know about. philosophy has nothing to contribute to the special sciences.

Philosophy is a meta-cognitive art form more than a science which aims to clarify that "big picture" of the whole of reality. — Agustino

philosophy doesn't help with that.

Given that "it is raining" and "it is true that it is raining" and "water is falling from the sky" all mean the same thing, you're just asserting the truism that it's raining if it's raining. — Michael

yep. so what's the matter? do you dissent to anything i've said? notice that i introduced truth with no reference to verification. so if what i say is trivial, you can't be right. you must haver made a mistake somewhere.

OK, so, let's put the pieces together.

what does it take for it to be raining? for water to fall from the sky.

what does it take for it to be true that it's raining? just for it to be raining.

so, what does it take for it to be true that it's raining? just for water to fall from the sky.

viola. nothing about languages or verification procedures – and notice you admit that water can fall from the sky even though there are neither of these things around.

i've never seen a philosopher do that in an interesting way, so probably not. in general philosophy contributes little to nothing to human knowledge. it confuses people, and then it can be used against itself to unwind that confusion. michael is experiencing such a confusion now, though whether he unwinds it is still to be seen.

the question has nothing to do with the word 'raining' and what it means. it has to do with what it takes for it to be raining. that's a meteorological phenomenon, not a linguistic one. so your rejoinder about the meaning of a word is simply irrelevant. no words need even exist, for it to be raining. water just has to fall from the sky.

not at all. for example, philosophy is not about the valency of elements, or the valency of verbs. that's what chemistry and linguistics are about.

i never asked about the sentence 'it is raining' and its meaning, did i? re-read the post; i just asked about what it is for it to be raining. for that to happen, water just has to fall from the sky.

philosophy roughly deals with those subjects of inquiry that take no special expertise. that is, philosophy deals with those problems you can solve just by talking about them, without any real need for specialized knowledge.

better?

ok, so for it to be raining, water has to be falling form the sky, nothing else. whether or not it's raining doesn't depend on whether there are any languages or verification procedures.

now let's bring truth into it. here's my claim: for it to be true that it's raining is just for it to be raining. that is, in any situation in which it's raining, it's true that it's raining, and in any situation in which it's true that it's raining, it's raining. these are just the very same thing.

does that sound right?

let's try a different tack.

let's talk abt. what it takes for it to be raining. here's my position: for it to be raining, water has to be falling from the sky (or something to that effect). there don't have to be any languages, or any verification procedures, for it to be raining.

in fact, i claim it rained lots of times on this planet long before there were any such things.

does that sound right?

i'm not asking about statements right now, nor anything abt. perspectives. i'm asking the following question:

does there need to be a method for verifying that it's raining, for it to be raining?

Your question is misleading — Michael

how is it misleading?

does there have to be a method of verification that it's raining, for it to be raining?

does there have to be a method of verification that it's raining, for it to be raining?

michael: granted that in order to know whether something is true, you need a means of verification.

but for it to be true, you don't.

Well, yes, because truth is predicated of statements. Only statements are the sort of things that can be true, correct? — Michael

no, for example, if i say 'it's true that it's raining,' i'm not saying anything about a statement. it can be true that it;s raining even if there are no statements and no one to make them - it just has to be raining. truth is predicated of propositions, which are the sorts of things clauses like: '...that p' denote.

And how am I to understand what you mean when you say that water just has to be falling from the sky? — Michael

what part don't you understand? do you not know what water is? what falling is? what the sky is? shall i explain them to you?

Any claim you make about the conditions for truth must be understood, and as per Wittgenstein the only way I can understand the claims you make is by understanding the rational and/or empirical occasions that warrant the use of those words. — Michael

yes and the occasions that make the use of 'it's raining' true are when it's raining. that's how the words are used, per their truth conditions. we might recognize it's raining by all sorts of means, or be wrong, or even never be able to figure it out. there may even be conditions on assertion and warrant that require we have at least some evidence for what we say, or we commit an epistemic faux pas of some sort. but that has no bearing on whether ot not it's true that it's raining, which is just for it to be raining. it's raining or not raining regardless of what evidence we may or may not have, and regardless of whether we can have any.

How exactly do you expect someone to learn a language if they can't recognise when they should or shouldn't make a particular claim? Language-acquisition would be impossible if recognition-transcendent conditions were part of a word's meaning. — Michael

wrong - whether it's raining doesn't depend on anyone recognizing that it does. yet we can still figure out how to use words like 'rain' by recognizing cases where it rains. that doesn't mean that it raining requires us to be able to recognize that it is. capiche?

to understand what it takes for the claim to be true and to know how to verify it are distinct. i underdtand 'it's raining''s truth conditions whne i know it's true iff it's raining. doesn't mean anything about my ability to recognize whether it's raining. how we use the words is that they're used to say something true when it's raining. this has nothing to do with verification - indeed when we say it's raining, we don't mean 'i can verify it's raining,' we just mean that it's raining. we may not be justified in asserting something w/o evidence or ability to verify, but that has no bearing on whether it's raining or not.

Not meaning to derail the thread, but briefly, do you think it's impossible for philosophy to acquire any kind of method? And if it isn't why don't we establish method in philosophy? — Agustino

yes, all methodology is granted by fiat. philosophy fails to have a methodology, probably because it has no subject matter.

According to Dummett (as per Wittgenstein), the meaning of the sentence isn't to be understood by appealing to some recognition-transcendent state-of-affairs that the statement corresponds to, but by looking to its practical use. — Michael

if u look to its practical use, you'll find it's correctly used when it's raining. this has to do with water falling form the sky, not epistemic conditions and verification and justification & blah blah blah

Verifiability is tied into the notion of meaning, and so also tied into the notion of truth. — Michael

nope. respond to the above.

for it to be true that it's raining is just doe it to be raining.

so according to u, for it to be raining, there have to be assertion conditions & justification & empirical conditions & verifiability & blah blah blah. nope. water just has to be falling from the sky.

in fact u seem to be committed to saying that for anything to be true, these inguistic conditions have to be set up, which is the same as to say for anything to be so, they have to be, i.e. a hard linguistic idealism. acc. to u, can't rain w/o a linguistic community - absurd

This is very strange coming from you. You've long argued against this Tarskian approach (e.g. here). — Michael

it works when u add the qualifier, as i did, 'given the meaning of the words.' i won't go into why the biconditionals u used to propose were wrong b/c i have learned form experience that it's pointless to try.

The realist, on the other hand, argues something like the statement "'it is raining' is true" meaning "'it is raining' corresponds to some relevant recognition-transcendent state-of-affairs" — Michael

whether it's raining is a recognition-transcendent state of affairs (it doesn't matter whether you know/think/can figure out whether it's raining – all that matters is that water's falling from the sky). but for it to be true that it's raining, it just has to be raining, and vice-versa. hence, even on this construal of realism, the realist is right (tho i would avoid the baggage of using any of this terminology).

notice also the anti-reliast is wrong: the anti-realist is now committed to saying that whether it's raining depends on there being a linguistic community with such-and-such conventions, empirical faculties, etc. whatever. nope. it rains whether or not there is any language at all.

but that they disagree on what it means to be true. — Michael

for p to be true is just for p.

'it's true that it's raining' means the same as 'it's raining.'

that's it.

this:

"'it is raining' is true" just means "there are rational and/or empirical grounds to justify the assertion 'it is raining'" — Michael

is wrong. '"it is raining" is true' does not mean anything more or less than 'it is raining.'

now, what does it take for it to be raining? well, water has to be falling from the sky, or something like that. does that have to do with 'rational and/or empirical grounds to justify an assertion?' no, it has to do with water falling from the sky.

given what the words, mean, can 'it is raining' be true if it's not raining? no. can it be raining, and 'it is raining' not be true? no. so we have a biconditional equivalence. but then, for 'it is raining' to be true (given what the words mean) just is for it to be raining. but now notice what you're claiming: that whether it's raning has to do with reasons, empirical grounds, justification of assertions, etc. no. it has to do with whether water falls from the sky.

hope that clears it up.

Obviously simply re-asserting the claim that gold was really found in the hills is no answer at all, — Michael

why is that not an answer? it's the right answer, surely - we might say other things about what it means for gold to be found, having to do with what exactly gold is, what a hill is, what finding is, etc. we might be able to do this, or we might not - what does it matter? if you want to know more abt. what gold is, ask a matallurgist, prospector, or chemist. if you want to know more about what a hill is, ask a geologist or a surveyor or a storyteller. what makes it true that gold was found in the hills? that gold was found in the hills. nothing less, and nothing more. the anti-realist acct. makes it both less and more, and so gets it wrong on both fronts.

the insistence that the conditions under which smth's true must be 'verification-immanent' is simply added for no reason. truth has nothing to do with verification.

Allowing truth to attach to sentence tokens allows a cleaner treatment of indexicals -- I think -- but then you have to make truth dependent on a language+interpretation as well as on how the world is, which I take it you're not inclined to do. — Srap Tasmaner

truth can attach to sentence tokens, by having what those sentence tokens express be true.

but then you have to make truth dependent on a language+interpretation as well as on how the world is, which I take it you're not inclined to do. — Srap Tasmaner

whether someone says something true is of course dependent on the language, because what someone says is a matter of linguistic convention. but whether this latter thing is so is not (unless of course it deals with matters of linguistic convention).

i don't think there's any problem of truth bearers. if you like you can say propositions are t/f, and sentences, assertions, etc. derivatively of this in the obvious way. but then propositions are completely theoretically trivial: for the prop p to be true is just for p. there's nothing to a 'proposition' other than that, and the notion is eliminable.

do not study philosophy. do something more interesting / worthwhile.

But here I'd like to slow down. Did you say "what's expressed by a sentence" rather than just "a sentence" for a reason? Is it the sentence that's true or false, or is it what's expressed by the sentence? If it's the latter, what sort of thing is that? — Srap Tasmaner

i take it that what's expressed by a sentence is distinct from the sentence qua linguistic object, since different sentences, both in the same language or in different languages, can express roughly the same thing.

it doesn't matter what you want to call it - to avoid theoretical commitments, just make it whatever you refer to when you use propositional anaphora like 'that,' when you say 'john thinks gold can't melt, and mary thinks that too.' you can call it a thought, proposition, whatever, it's just the thing one thinks or says in saying the sentence. even more colloquially, it's what people refer to when they say 'are you thinking what i'm thinking?' or 'i said what you said.'

yes. and gold melting at a certain pt. is also not a matter of convention; hence what's expressed by a sentence claiming that gold can't ever melt isn't true or false as a matter of convention / use either. it expresses a purported truth, which is so or isn't depending on the behavior of gold and not on the language. it is a matter of convention that the language uses those words to express that purported truth. this convention, you can call a matter of 'use.' but it's just not relevant whether anyone knows, or can know, whether what's expressed by the words is true.

that sounds plausible.

that is not what i'm saying, although it may be a consequence of it. what i'm saying is super duper simple: to know what 'gold' means, you have to know it refers to gold. that's it.

For example can I not competently say "Gold used to be found in those hills", even if I am not someone who can tell real gold from fool's gold? — Janus

right. the above position claims, absurdly, that a competence in prospecting, metalworking, etc. is required to know what 'gold' means.

perhaps some minimal acquaintance with gold's features is needed to know what gold is, but the semantic competence is just to know, that given one knows what gold is, that the word 'gold' is what's used to refer to it.

may occasionally fail — Srap Tasmaner

they could fail all the time (say, if for some reason it became hard to identify gold, because the sign by which people identified it before went away)

but that failure we wouldn't usually describe as not knowing which word to use (though that happens too) but as not knowing whether the word applies in the case at hand. — Srap Tasmaner

it'd be described as not knowing whether something's gold. a consequence of that would be not knowing the word applies, but that's just an epiphenomenon. the point is they can't figure out it's gold.

competence using the word "gold" does require competence in recognizing gold. — Srap Tasmaner

right. it only means knowing that 'gold' refers to gold.

We don't expect the congenitally blind to be able to acquire competence in using color words, for instance — Srap Tasmaner

i don't think this is right. the blind might have certain difficulties figuring out that things are certain colors (though sometimes not - there are many ways to do this besides seeing them), but they know what the words mean, at least to a large extent. perhaps loss of vision results in some lack of semantic competence, but certainly not total.

And the only way we have to judge another's linguistic competence is by observing how consistently they link occasion features we recognize to words we expect. I don't want to leap to the conclusion that this is what competence consists of, but it is the criteria by which we judge it. (Just as there are criteria by which we pick out gold.) — Srap Tasmaner

this is just not right. we don't judge whether someone knows what 'gold' means by how good of a prospector they are.

criteria by which we happen to pick out a material don't determine what the word referring to the material means; 'gold' just means that very stuff, gold. we might use any number of criteria to pick it out, and these might change over time or disappear, or new ones might arise.

And honestly the ideal would be high empirical competence coupled with high linguistic competence. Failure of either sort degrades the effectiveness of communication, right? — Srap Tasmaner

lack of empirical competence only constrains communication in the sense that it'll be harder to say certain true things, because you can't figure out what's true. in general it would be absurd to expect competence in all empirical matters that involve the use of a word - then we could be omniscient just by learning a language.

That's the sort of thing I mean. I just mean "observation" in the sense that, presented with a sample of gold, you would assent to "That's gold." Nothing more subtle than that. — Srap Tasmaner

i don't think competence with the word 'gold' requires an ability always to recognize gold. it just requires knowing that the word refers to that substance. there may be difficulties in actually figuring out when you're faced with that substance, and these are not semantic problems, but empirical ones with figuring out what something is (is it gold or not? my semantic competence will not tell me, though it will tell me, given that I already know it's gold, to call it 'gold' – my semantic competence will tell me, given that i know it's gold, to call it 'oro' instead).

But the sort of competence we were looking for should give us a way of mapping words onto observations, what we might describe as associating meanings with truth conditions. — Srap Tasmaner

i just don't see what observations have to do with anything. if the ppl say 'gold doesn't melt,' and by that it's understood to mean it doesn't melt ever, then they're wrong. what does it matter what they've observed?

competence is a slippery term. i think to be competent with 'gold,' all you have to know basically is that it refers to gold. of course all 'knowing that' and 'knowing what' is gradient, you can know how or that in some respects & not others. further, it's likely no competence is actually complete (as in frege puzzles, where speakers don't realize two expressions refer to the same thing).

yes, knowing how to use the word doesn't mean knowing everything about its referent. it means knowing what the word means - since the meaning of the word is just that it refers to such and such a substance, to know the meaning is just to know which substance that is. as with all knowledge, this can be mulitfaceted, incomplete, etc. competence with using the word is knowing how to employ it correctly, i.e. using it to refer to that substance.

My understanding of your view was that you're using the word "gold" right so long as you use it to pick out gold. When you talk about gold, you're talking about a substance that has properties you don't (and maybe can't) know about, but that doesn't mean you're using the word wrong. — Srap Tasmaner

competence with use of a word doesn't just involve accidents, tho; if u don't know what gold is but just happen to use the word to point out what's actually gold on accident a bunch of times, in one sense u've used it 'correctly,' but in another u 'don't know how' to use the word, i.e. your competence isn't such that it guides you to actually referring to gold non-accidentally. this latter notion of competence makes use of what'd traditionally be called 'intensional' capacities, viz. a way of mapping words to their extensions via appropriate criteria.

there are of course many legitimate notions of 'using a word correctly,' & u must make clear which is at stake.