If "there are no propositions" is true at World X then there are no propositions in World X. — Michael

Doesn't that mean World X is empty? A world is basically a set of propositions.

Okey dokey. :cool:

Firstly, "having ontological commitment to mathematical entities" does not entail platonism. Immanent realists and conceptualists also have ontological commitment to mathematical entities. — Michael

I wouldn't say accepting mathematical entities entails platonism. I would say that platonism best reflects the way we generally think about things like the set of natural numbers N.

An immanent realist is stuck saying that N is a property of something in the world. I don't think anybody knows what exactly that object is, which has N as a property, but the immanent realist is asserting its existence anyway. Immanent realism is more of a gesture toward avoiding platonism rather than a full bodied alternative.

The conceptualist is saying that numbers are mental objects, which means their only existence is in specific acts of thinking about numbers. Do I really need to explain why nobody believes this?

Instead of those, look at the SEP article on philosophy of math. It shows the alternatives to platonism are logicism, intuitionism, formalism, and predicativism.

Do you want to go through those?

You don't need to believe in mind-independent abstract objects to believe in mind-independent physical objects, and you don't need to believe in mind-independent abstract objects to believe that these mind-independent physical objects move and interact with one another. — Michael

Yes. Neither of these sentences has anything to do with Quine's argument, which has shaped the prevailing view in phil of math and phil of science. Just check it out, that's all I'm saying.

The indispensability argument is about mathematical realism. I just wanted you to look at what Quine was saying, which is that if you deny platonism of any kind, you're rejecting science in general. You can do that, I was just encouraging you to be aware that you're doing that.

There's no mystical connection between utterances and mind-independent, non-spatial, non-temportal abstract objects; there's just actual language-use and the resulting psychological and behavioural responses. — Michael

Yeah, Quine is the inscrutability of reference guy, in the neighborhood of behaviorism.

I think I’m looking into it only as deeply as it needs to be. Platonism is a result of being bewitched by language, misinterpreting the grammar as entailing something it doesn’t. — Michael

You're basically saying Quine was an idiot.

I don't think you're bothering to look very deeply into this. I was just saying you should look into the consequences so you don't end up contradicting yourself.

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.

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.

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

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.

A platonist does, but I don't think that a realist must be a platonist. A realist can be a non-platonist by accepting that only the things we say are true or false but that some of the things we say are unknowably true or false. — Michael

I guess the realist is thinking that engaging the world just automatically comes with assumptions, some of which aren't held in consciousness until there's a reason to. Maybe a behaviorist would say these un-thought-of assumptions don't exist in a netherworld, but are implicit in behavior until they become explicit in speech?

But they sound like daemons escaping from Hell. — Banno

I'll have to go to youtube and find the audio.

Stop stirring the possum. — Banno

Australian possums are cute. North American ones are ugly.. and mean.

I also don't think that a painting is accurate until someone has painted it. But that's because a painting being accurate (or inaccurate) before it is painted makes no sense. Just as a sentence being true (or false) before it is said makes no sense.

This isn't truth skepticism. — Michael

It is. A truth realist believes there are truths which have never been uttered.

The anti-realist (at least of Dummett's kind) says that if a sentence is true then it's possible to know that it's true (subject to the appropriate restrictions as per Fitch's paradox), whereas the realist allows for the possibility that some true sentences are unknowably true. — Michael

That's about verifiability. You're a truth skeptic in the sense that you don't think P is true until someone expresses P.

And as the diagram shows, "there are no minds in World B" is a truth in World A about World B, not a truth in World B. — Michael

But this sentence wasn't true before you uttered it, right? That's truth anti-realism. A truth realist would say it was true before you said it.

To me arguments for staying alive or for meaning only work if you HAVE to live. Filling life with good things, doing what you love, all that junk only has logical weight if one is unable to die until a set time. Baring that I see no reason for living. Desire for pleasures only applies if you are alive, if you die there is no need for any of that. Same with love, friendship, food, money, etc. — Darkneos

You're sort of hardwired to try to preserve your own life. Adrenaline is your body's argument.

What a number of philosophical people have done in the face of the challenge is to seek authenticity. Discover who you really are and live life like a sacred dance. Of some kind.

So it takes some courage to direct a firearm into your mouth. It also takes courage to find the way to live life on your terms: to learn to say yes to life as Nietzsche very well might have said. It starts by learning to listen.

This is a pretty cool truthbearer:

If you think that less goods with higher prices makes your life better, then let's follow the trade policies of the 1930's — ssu

We can just go back to 1987. That actually would help American labor. I understand why you aren't concerned with that. You're a world away.

Per your view there aren't many truths in the present either.

There is a concentrated effort against trade unions and the labor movement, and this will surely continue during the Trump years. Just look at the billionaires that are the backers of Trump. — ssu

It's still true that free trade and undocumented labor are two ways American labor is undermined. If either of those was reversed, it would lead to changes in the American economy in favor of labor. Don't let Trumpitis make you blind to the facts.

Heaven forbid that you would say something. :wink: — Leontiskos

You don't have much room to talk there buddy.

Undocumented labor is one of the ways the government undermines the power of labor in the US. Tariffs plus deportation would lay the groundwork for an economic revolution.

Just to be pedantic, it's really the act of assertion that magically creates meaning. The painting is only truth apt if someone is asserting it. So it's not really the absence of truthbearers so much as an absence of people that renders the world of 60 million years ago meaningless.

I was simply explaining the ordinary grammar of the word "true". — Michael

Maybe that's how you use the word, but to my ears, if you say nothing was true 60 million years ago, it sounds like an anti-realist stance. If there were obtaining states of affairs back then, then you're picturing that world as if a human actually was observing it, dividing it up the way humans do, although I'm sure you'd disagree with this?

Anyway, I was just trying to categorize your view. I don't object unless I see a contradiction. I don't think there is one, you're just insisting on a certain usage of "true." :up:

Here's a post of mine from six days ago:

And the existence of gold does not depend on us saying "gold exists".
— Michael — Michael

Ok. So you accept that some state of affairs obtains in the absence of anyone to describe it. I don't really know what the practical implications of your view are.

If you're asking if planets exist that haven't been described, then yes. — Michael

The existence of a planet is a state of affairs. So you accept that there are states of affairs that have not been described.

You are asking this question:

Do you have to have those descriptions in hand in order for there to be true descriptions? Where no description is available (say about something across the galaxy), would you say there is no true description?

I don't even understand how to answer such a question. It's inherently confused. — Michael

There is some state of affairs even when there is no one to describe it, right?

I'm saying that a truth is something like a correct description, and that descriptions (whether correct or incorrect) didn't exist 50 million years ago. — Michael

Do you have to have those descriptions in hand in order for there to be truth? Where no description is available (say about something across the galaxy), would you say there is no truth?

Do they exist if language doesn't? This is the core of the issue. If sentences are features of language then even if sentences are abstract my point still stands: if there is no language then nothing has the property of being true or false, much like if there is no language then nothing has the property of being semantically meaningful. — Michael

I understand what you're saying. You're saying truth is a concept that couldn't have been meaningful 50 million years ago because there was no one to recognize any kind of concept. From our point of view, there were rocks and clouds, but those concepts didn't exist then, which means there was no one to observe that they existed.

But even in the absence of an observer, you're saying the rocks and clouds were there, doing what rocks and clouds do.

There's no need to resort to Platonism. — Michael

I think you've already accepted the existence of sentences, so you've accepted a kind of Platonism. Note that this "Platonism" is a term from phil of math. It's not about Plato.

Are they mind-independent? Do sentences exist even if language doesn't? — Michael

They're independent of any particular mind. That's what makes them abstract objects. The same is the case for numbers, sets, propositions, etc. They aren't physical objects.

How can an abstract object have the property of truth? — Michael

In the case of a proposition, it's because it's the meaning of an uttered sentence.

How can a sound be "connected" to an abstract object? — Michael

Sounds and marks are intentionally used to express truth or falsehood.

Well, its a complex, multifaceted issue. A close approximation might be that being true is something we do with utterances, rather than saying that some utterances are true. It's not the noise or the marks that are true, after all - utterances are only true if a whole lot of other stuff is included. There's a tendency to try to make a messy process much neater, but the mess is perhaps ineliminable. — Banno

:up:

What I'm saying is what I've said above:

1. Truth is a property of truth-bearers, and
2. Truth-bearers are features of language, not mind-independent abstract objects à la Platonism — Michael

Sentences are abstract objects. If you rule out sentences, your truth bearer is sounds and marks. How can a sound have the property of truth?

What I gather is that Michael believes that truth only applies to utterances, whether spoken or written. He does keep talking about sentences, but I think that's because he doesn't realize that sentences are not physical objects. At the same time, he wants to be a realist. I don't think there is anyway to reconcile those two beliefs.

Well, yes. But is the set of all possible sentences different to the set of all sentences? — Banno

It's just that that's a big abstract object. Does it cover all sentences past and future? Like sentences from dead languages like Sumerian?

Does this mean Michael is invoking a set of all possible sentences? Or did I totally misunderstand?

So you don't believe there is an unknown truth regarding Park. This would require accepting the existence of an unavailable truthbearer. I'm a little befuddled that you don't see the implications of that. But it is what it is.

1. Truth and falsehood are properties of truth-bearers
2. Truth-bearers are features of language, not mind-independent abstract objects

Which of these do you disagree with? — Michael

You can believe whatever you like. It doesn't bother me. Sentences are also abstract objects. All you have left is sound and marks, but you said gold can't have the property of truth, so I don't know how a sound is supposed to.

I'm not sure what that means. Is there an unknown truth regarding Park? Or not?