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?

We don't need to know that a sentence is true for it to be true. — Michael

But we don't even know what the sentence is in this case. Are you saying that an unknown sentence is true? If so, where is this sentence?

I mean what the word ordinarily means. It is possible to say something truthful that answers the question.

How is this not clear? — Michael

How do you know it's possible for anyone to state the reason for Park's disappearance? We may never know.

I'm saying that it is possible to respond to the question by saying something true. — Michael

What do you mean by "possible?" Do you mean in principle, it's possible to answer by stating a true truthbearer?

No, when I say "there's an answer to the question" I am saying that it is possible to answer the question with a truthful sentence. — Michael

I see. So when you say the answer exists, you mean it exists in potential?

There's an answer to the question "why did Yoon Park disappear?" — Michael

The answer exists? Where is it?

That depends on what they're talking about. If they're talking about the existence of aliens then either they're saying that the truth of the sentence "aliens exist" is unknown or they're saying that the existence of aliens is unknown. — Michael

They're talking about why Yoon Park disappeared. There's some truth regarding this, but we don't know what it is. Where's the truthbearer?

Truth is (only) a property of truth-bearers.
Truth-bearers did not exist 65 million years ago.
Therefore, truth was not a property of anything that existed 65 million years ago. — Michael

So this is my question: when someone says "The truth of the matter is unknown." What does that mean? Where is the truthbearer?

Truth bearers didn't exist 65 million years ago. Do you agree or disagree? — Michael

I agree. Still, it was true. Ask any scientist.

So it is true now, but it wasn't true then? For real?

You're just repeating the same fictionalist account.

Truth-bearers didn't exist 10 million years ago, even if our informal language implies that they did. — Michael

So you have a special language where it wasn't true that some dinosaurs had feathers? That's weird.

See my previous comment. — Michael

Birds are dinosaurs.

I don't why you're making this so complicated. 10 million years ago, it was true that some dinosaurs had feathers. Easy.

You can say it however you like, but my language community agrees that it's fine to say

10 million years ago it was true that some dinosaurs had feathers. Because it definitely was true.

10 million years ago, it was true that some dinosaurs had feathers.

I don't see a problem.

Right, so as you're looking for your sunglasses, you are, in a sense, looking for a truth (whatever your truthbearer is). You have expectations, hypotheses, speculations, etc. You don't know which, if any of them is true, but you believe there is some truth regarding the matter.

If you eliminate the use of truth except in cases where an utterance has occurred, you're saying that this folk psychology about truth is all wrong. You have also bumped off realism, because this confidence in unknown, but knowable truths is essential to realism. You're a truth skeptic and an anti-realist. You just can't have it both ways. It's a contradiction.

Likewise, if you're a realist, you have confidence that the pre-human world was full of events, all of which are describable in principle. Just as you have confidence that there is some true statement about some unknown detail of Pluto, you believe there are all sorts of true statements about worlds where humans do not exist.

That is a great book! Get his books on the history of AP. They're great too.

An essential feature of thought is the objective narrative. This is like the third person voice in a novel that describes things that no one actually saw or experienced.

You use this all the time as you navigate the world. For instance, imagine you're looking for your sunglasses.

Gotta go. Hopefully you see where I'm headed with this, if not I'll finish later!

Are they mind-independent abstract objects? I don’t believe in any such things. — Michael

They're independent of any particular mind, like numbers. Think of it as a pattern if that helps.

Truth and falsity are properties of sentences, sentences are features of language, and language is a social (and psychological) activity performed by and between people. — Michael

Yea. If you don't want to deal with any abstract objects, you'll need to use utterances as your truthbearer.

So if there are no people there is nothing which has the property of being either true or false. — Michael

Ok. This is truth skepticism. That's just what it's called.

But none of this is relevant to what I’m claiming, which is that being true and being false are properties of sentences, not properties of rain (and that there is no Platonic third thing that “sits” between the two) — Michael

Sentences are also abstract objects. If you're talking about the sounds and marks we make, the correct word is utterance, not sentence.

If by this you mean that the sentence “it is raining” is true if and only if the rain exists then that is exactly what I have been saying. — Michael

It could be that a person uses that sentence as a euphemism. In the movie Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder's character comments, while exhuming a grave, that it "Could be worse. Could be raining.". Immediately after he says that rain starts pouring down. So when a person says, "It's raining." they may mean that things have gotten worse.

You need a theory of meaning that covers this kind of speech. What do you propose?

So the lecture is not denying AGW. — Agree-to-Disagree

Ok.

Notice the bit where we can chose between realism and antirealsim? That's my suggestion for the answer to the OP. That the choice between realism and antirealism is a choice about how we talk about stuff, not a debate about metaphysical actualities. — Banno

I asked Nagase once how Davidson's stuff squares with realism vs antirealism, and he said that stuff gets tacked on later by personal biases. :up:

I agree. Whether it's property exchange or information exchange, community confidence is necessary. That confidence is engineered. It's one part technology and one part social practice. Time in use proves and reinforces the value of the strategy, whatever it is. A sentence is a piece of technology.

Cool :up:

Are you serious?

But there are models available to predict this — Benkei

Where? I've been looking into this for a while because I've been exposed countless times and never got it. I'd like to know if someone has done some substantial work on it.