I'm not saying that there are no intentions to do things, only that intentions don't work the way that you think they should.

Now your are just arguing in circles.

Simply doing an action is not enough to intentionally control it. You may simply slip on a banana peel, and it is you who is doing the slipping, but without an intention to do the action you cannot control the action. — litewave

This is not so. On my understanding of 'action', what you described doesn't count as a genuine action. Slipping on a banana peel is not something that you do intentionally, it is something that simply happens to you outside of your control.

I'm not committed to the claim that just any sort of behavior or a bodily movement counts as an action that we perform as agents.

Are you not paying attention? I've stated numerous times that I am adhering to a definition of subjective which is "of the subject". If you are interpreting anything other than this, then that is your mistake, and the ambiguity is produced by your own mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was just trying to help you... This only makes your argument even weaker than I though it was, because the conclusion is trivial and proves nothing of any interest as I already showed.

So in your example, when you say things like having a toothache are objective, you refer to the weaker sense of "objective". — Metaphysician Undercover

No I'm not.

But the fact that it is justified, and agreed upon, and "objective" in that way, does not make it an objective truth. You may have fooled everyone into thinking that you have a tooth ache, when you really do not. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, you are begging the question. Obviously on my understanding of truth, truth is not the same as justification.

You are going in big circles all the time. You have your own idiosyncratic understanding of the concepts "truth", "objectivity", "subjectivity" and "interpretation", and all your arguments have this understanding built right into them, and so they can't seriously engage anyone who doesn't already agree with you on most things. If you want to have a chance of convincing anybody and not just talking to yourself, you should construct your arguments in such a way that even people who don't agree with your views could still find the arguments convincing.

There is no such thing as correct or incorrect translation of a language into another. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I say there is such a thing, so?

You haven't yet given me an acceptable definition of "objective truth" — Metaphysician Undercover

I did give a definition of 'objective truth' way back, in terms of truth conditions. And nothing that you've said shows that it is not 'acceptable'.

just like you've failed in your attempt to provide an acceptable definition of "objective reality" — Metaphysician Undercover

Objective reality def= anything that could be described truly or falsely.

I suppose this means that the intention does not influence the intentional act and thus denies point 1 of my argument? If an intention does not precede the act then there is no time for the intention to influence the act. — litewave

I think that what really matters for free will is not that your 'intentions' must control your action, but that you should control what you do. And when people control what they do, we say that they behave intentionally, but this doesn't mean that we have to postulate the existence of a distinct psychological state that accompanies actions which is called the intention.

The problem with such an intentional act seems to be that we lose control of the act and thus the act is not free. — litewave

This doesn't follow, because you still have the agent himself who can perfectly well control his actions, only not by a mediation of distinct events of 'intention'. You intentionally control your actions simply by doing them.

Or, as McDowell puts it, when one intends to do something, one is thereby doing it, just not right now. — Pierre-Normand

Can you explain the "just not right now" part?

Right, I think that I picked this idea from McDowell, and it is interesting to know that it goes way back to Aristotle.

Why cannot an intention be freely chosen (in libertarian sense)? Because to freely choose an intention would be a free and therefore intentional act, and an intentional act must be influenced by the agent's intention to do the act (point 1); in this case it would be an intention to choose an intention. But the intention to choose an intention would have to be freely chosen too and therefore would have to be influenced by another intention, and so on - ad infinitum. Obviously, no one can work through an infinite chain of intentions and so our intentional acts must start from an intention that is not freely chosen. — litewave

One way to block the regress is to say that an intention to act is not a separate event from the free act itself, and so there is no need to postulate a second order intention to explain the first, and so on.

In other words, when you act freely, it is not because there's a distinct event which is your intention to act freely, that somehow causes your action; but rather the intention is an aspect or a property of the action itself, and thus not a separable entity.

On second thought, I think that there's something to what you say.

Actually I'm not quite sure what is supposed to be the actual paradox in the ship of Theseus story. I think it can be formulated as either a question about identity through time (how something with different parts can remain the same object), or as a problem with vagueness (at what point exactly something ceases to be the same object) - and in the latter case I think it is indeed an analogous problem to the sorites paradox.

However, there is another distinct problem concerning material constitution, which I think clearly is not the same as the sorites paradox, and this is the story about the cat Tibbles that loses its tail, while remaining the same cat (and the problem is that this claim seem to violate Leibniz's law). So it seems to me that you can think about the ship of Theseus as either a variation on the sorites paradox or the cat's paradox.

Exactly, you've put what I had in mind better then I could. The sorites problem and the topic of material constitution seem to me like two quite different topics.

I don't think there's a general answer to your question. One has to look on a case by case basis.

There's a sense of 'object' on which a heap of send would not be considered an object, but you can perhaps invent a story where it would be natural to call it an object.

Right, you could say that.

So the question really is how do mass nouns behave when you qualify them in some way -- the bronze this statue is made of, the snow in the mountains, the water in that glass. Does such a qualifier make an object? — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not sure whether I understand your question. Are you asking under what conditions some bit of material becomes a concrete object?

As Pierre-Normand already said, it all depends on what one means by 'objects' and what is our purpose in talking about this or that particular sort of thing.

If I refer to some stuff by referring to its current configuration as an object, I'm still referring to the stuff. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, but the definition goes from the stuff to the molecules, and not the other way around. First you identify a bit of material as some kind of unity (something that you can hold in your hands etc.), and then you say that it must be composed of some set of particles. So the concept of a piece of material is the more basic one in our experience of dealing with material stuff, and therefore I don't see what is the purpose of reducing things like lumps of clay to 'mereological sums'.

(and there's a further question about which set exactly defines this or that piece of matter: If I remove one molecule of bronze from a piece of bronze, would it be no longer the same piece of bronze?)

Because as I said, you know absolutely nothing about the particles that compose things like lumps of clay (you can't name them etc.), so the definition is quite useless for most practical purposes.

So the point is that I have to define my set by reference to the statue? Must I have an independent way of referring to it? What about before it was a statue, when it was a pallet of bronze? — Srap Tasmaner

Not necessarily, but still the particles must form some sort of unity (like calling it a lump or even a heap).

Btw, I liked snow because it's more comical, but the point I was reaching for -- that it's generally clear whether we're referring to an object or some stuff -- is more clearly made with water: moving the water from a glass to a bowl means destroying the object that is a cylinder of water. — Srap Tasmaner

Well even if you call a cylinder of water an 'object' it is certainly not an object in the same sense as a piece of ice for example.

I think the sense of identity here is more or less just set membership though: all the bits of stuff that the statue was made of are still here. — Srap Tasmaner

But you know nothing about those bits: you haven't counted how much molecules composed the statue and how much are there in the lump etc. and confirmed that they are the same. One would usually infer that it is the same bit of material just on the basis of seeing the lump emerging in the process of the statue's destruction.

What I mean to say is that, unless you can make sense of the idea of some quantity of material lumped together as a unified object, then it is not clear how could you identify all its bits as the same bits that can compose something else.

To complement Pierre-Normand's answer: if you take a slightly different example, that of a clay sculpture, I think it becomes more intuitive to think that if you crush the sculpture then what remains is a lump of clay that was identical (in some sense) to the original sculpture that has been destroyed. At least it makes sense to refer to the lump of clay as the same lump that composed the statue while it existed. And if you think about it, you really know nothing about the lump's mereological parts, and so it seems that you can identify it as the same lump only because you are referring to it as an object and not merely a sum of clay particles.

(and same can be said about a piece of bronze - e.g., imagine that a statue is melted down, and a new statue is cast from the same material - I think it is pretty intuitive to say that the new statue is made of the same piece of bronze as the old one)

And this also explains the disanalogy with your example of snow, since a heap of snow doesn't have the same unity as a piece of clay, and so we mean different things when we refer to "the same snow" as opposed to "the same piece of material X".

Excellent explanation, thanks.

So, my view (following Wiggins and Marcus) regarding event-types is similar. The general category event, just like the general category material object, is a dummy sortal since it isn't, in the general case, specific enough to determine conditions of persistence and individuation for events. — Pierre-Normand

What you said about a murder and a death being two distinct events now reminds me of Wiggins' claim that two distinct objects can exist at the same place and time (like the statue and the piece bronze of which it is composed). I guess the two ideas are not unrelated?

I agree that it is only in relation to a specific practical context, and our purposes in that context, that a death and a murder can be subsumed under the event-types (the equivalent of substance-sortals for events) that individuate them. My claim was that it isn't generally the case that they will turn out, under those pragmatic conditions, to identify the same event. And that's in part because 'event' is a dummy sortal — Pierre-Normand

What do you mean by 'dummy sortal'?

I have never observed this. — Rich

You have never observed what? I'm not sure what your are referring to.

No one has ever found a boundary between the micro and the macro and the flux in the universe percolates to all levels of observations. — Rich

It doesn't prove that there are no such boundaries though.

In any case, the crux of the issue lies in whether one can find immobility in the universe, that is persistent and consistent throughout duration, such that it can be call a truth or a fact. — Rich

The question doesn't make sense unless you can tell me in advance what should count as "immobility" and "persistence".

Nothing is persistent or consistent long enough to be a fact, though one can label it as such until this belief is undermined by new events. — Rich

I don't think that fact about cats (or whatever) are in any way any less real or objective just because the subatomic particles from which cats are composed behave in funny ways. We care about cats only in so far as their observable properties and behavior is concerned, and on the macroscopic levels cats (as animals) exhibit perfectly stable and persistent behavior, even if on the subatomic level of description things behave differently (their quantum properties after all don't show up on the macroscopic level, so we are perfectly entitled to ignore them when we deal with cats, or anything else).

The evolving quantum state of any system per the Schrodinger's equation. — Rich

I don't see how this is relevant.

What makes you think that there is a fixed and determinate reality? A fixed meaning of the sentence cannot provide truth if there is no corresponding fixed reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

If this is what your argument really comes down to, then surely you've given no reasons to think there's no "fixed reality" (whatever that means).

Are you saying that there is nothing in the concept of interpretation, to suggest that an interpretation is necessarily subjective? Remember how I defined subjective as "of the subject". Do you know of anything else, other than the mind of a subject, which could give us an interpretation? If so, name it. Is it God or something like that? Otherwise I think you're just spouting bullshit. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are different senses of "subjective" here that we shouldn't mix together. Initially you have used "subjective" to mean something that is incompatible with objective truth, but now you are using it in a weaker and more broader sense as anything that is related to subjects. But subjective in this other sense can be perfectly compatible with objective truth, since many things that have to do with subjects are themselves perfectly objective (e.g., if I have a toothache, it's an objective fact about me). Obviously all cognition is 'subjective' in the sense the it involves subjects, but this is a trivial claim, and doesn't prove that cognition cannot itself objectively grasp reality.

And now, about interpretation, if you think about actual cases where it makes sense to talk about interpretation, then it actually shows that 'interpretation' is something that is usually aimed at achieving an objective grasp of something which itself is not subjective. Here are some examples (and they could be multiplied):

• Interpretation of a foreign language: you are using a dictionary to translate sentences in a language that you don't understand into your native tongue. And in this context it makes sense to speak about correct and incorrect interpretation of the text - you've either translated the text correctly into your own language, or you didn't. And what would count in this case as the correct interpretation is not subjective in the sense that it is not up to you to decide what is the correct translation of any given sentence (e.g. that "schnee ist weiß" is correctly translated from German to English as "snow is white" is an objective fact about German and English).
  
• Interpretation of a map: to grasp a map, or know how to use it, you must know all sorts of conventions (such as, this icon stands for this kind of building, a green area is where trees grow etc.). And indeed there's a sense in which to understand a map you must apply some interpretation to understand it, but again there's a distinction between the correct and incorrect interpretation of the map, which itself is not merely a 'subjective' distinction. If you apply the correct interpretation then you would able navigate around using the map, and thus acquire objective knowledge about your surroundings, which would not be possible under just any sort of interpretation of the map that one could choose.

You haven't provided a proper analogy. My argument would be like this. Grass is dependent on sunlight. Cows are dependent on grass. Therefore cows are dependent on sunlight. The truth conditions of the statement are dependent on interpretation. Truth is dependent on the truth conditions. Therefore truth is dependent on interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but I already acknowledged that the truth of a sentence is in some sense dependent on how its meaning is interpreted, and this doesn't help you because it doesn't prove that truth is subjective. This is because a) I reject your claim that all interpretations are necessarily subjective (in the sense of being incompatible with objective truth - see above) and b) even if I grant you the premise that all interpretations are subjective (and I don't), as my original example about the cows and grass show, you cannot logically infer from the fact that A is dependent on B, anything about the properties of A from the properties of B (so if B is subjective, and A is dependent on B, it doesn't follow that A itself is subjective).

We need to go way back in this thread, to see why I argue that truth is necessarily subjective. This is because not only is the interpretation of the sentence subjective, but also the interpretation of reality, which the sentence is supposed to correspond to, is subjective. — Metaphysician Undercover

I would make precisely the same objection to this argument as the objection that I made to your "interpretation of language is subjective" argument. It is possible to achieve perfectly objective interpretations of reality in most normal cases (e.g. if you are watching an action film, and believe that someone is shooting at you from the screen, then you are obviously incorrectly interpreting reality, as opposed to the people who understand that they are only watching a movie, and there are no people behind the screen with guns, and so on). And secondly even if I grant you that all interpretations of reality are subjective (and I don't), then it still doesn't follow that we cannot establish objective standards of truth on the basis of these interpretations, because this sort of inference is logically fallacious.

If X changes, it is no longer X, but now Y. How could you fix your reference, if the thing you call X, is Y by the time you finish calling it X. — Metaphysician Undercover

This claim is ambiguous. You have to distinguish between a case of an X changing into a completely different thing Y (a cube of ice melting into a puddle of water), and the case of an X that is changing one or more of its properties while remaining the same X (like a car that moves from position a to position b while remaining the same car). In the second case we can perfectly well fix the reference for X even if X changes some of its properties in the process.

If I'm a moron, why don't you fuck off and leave me alone?

You can't parse definitions? — Terrapin Station

Whatever that means...

Are you going to ask for definitions of some of those words next? — Terrapin Station

At least give some sort example to illustrate what you meant (that is an example of "dealing with the meanings of words in isolation").

What do you mean by "deal" and "meaning of words"? It seems to me that you have something different in mind than what Frege and Wittgenstein had.

The question then is: must there be an established practice for using the predicate "...green" in just that sense for the question to be understood? And the answer would seem to be no. All that's required is that the interlocutor has a grasp of the point of the request, and this understanding may only requires something like agreement in form of life (including, possibly, a shared culture). — Pierre-Normand

I think this you are exactly right, and this reflects correctly both Travis' view and of the later Wittgenstein. There's a wonderful paper by Putnam called Rethinking Mathematical Necessity that explores this topic further.

Empirical inquiry oftentimes is the proper way for us to clarify our concepts (or, our 'conceptions', as Wiggins would characterize the Fregean senses of natural kind terms) and to better anchor them into the essential natures we seek to disclose (when there are any). — Pierre-Normand

I don't believe that conceptual inquiry is a way to 'disclose' the essential metaphysical nature of things (and therefore I also reject the idea of a synthetic apriori truth, at least on the traditional understanding of the term), and this is perhaps where our disagreement lies.

I think that in some sense it is an arbitrary matter whether we say that two events are identical or not (like a death and a murder), and it is a confusion in my opinion to think that analyzing the concepts "death" and "murder" can tell you the 'real' answer from the perceptive of the events 'themselves' as it were (and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I read you as saying that there is an objective answer to this question, which is determined by the nature of the events in the world).

I agree that concepts are world-involving as you said, but not by a way of reflecting the metaphysical essences of things. However, it is also not the case on my view (and I agree with you here) that "investigation into the objects, kinds and properties that our words purport to refer to is something that occurs outside of the bounds of the conceptual".

The first big problem, then, is that that idea is ridiculous. — Terrapin Station

Why? Because you've said so?

I think a good place to look for understanding what Wittgenstein meant is Frege, especially Frege's context principle (which Wittgenstein adopted in the Tractatus: "never ask about the meaning of a word in isolation from its occurrence in sentences"). Here's a very useful quote form Frege:

What is distinctive about my conception of logic is that I begin by giving pride of place to the content of the word ‘true’, and then immediately go on to introduce a thought as that to which the question ‘Is it true?’ is in principle applicable. So I do not begin with concepts and put them together to form a thought or judgment; I come by the parts of a thought by analyzing the thought”

(the emphasis is mine)

And I think this quote is useful because it captures pretty well what Wittgenstein was doing in the Tractatus as well. Wittgenstein was interested in the logical analysis of propositions, and what characterizes propositions is that (like Frege's thoughts) they can be either true or false. So when we analyze a proposition (that is, break it down into its constituent parts) what we should be asking in the course of our analysis is what the proposition should be like in order to function as a sign that is essentially capable of representing a situation either truly or falsely. And Wittgenstein's key insight was that a proposition is able to do this because it is a picture of a possible state of affairs, or a fact. And now we can further analyze facts into things, but whatever those things are, they must owe they identity to the facts in which they can logically occur (just like words owe their meaning to the meaning of the sentences which they compose, as the context principle says). And thus Wittgenstein writes:

2.011 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact.

2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing.

2.0123 If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts. (Every such possibility must lie in the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot subsequently be found.

So what Wittgenstein did is start from language (propositions) and ask what the world must be like for language to function the way it does (that is, represent things truly or falsely). In other words, Wittgenstein took logic as a guide to our ontology. Whatever things are there in the world, they must be such that we can think them (or represent them in language); and what we can think is facts or states of affairs, not objects or things. So this is why he says in the opening sections of the Tractatus that the world is made up of facts not things, in order to emphasize, like Frege, that he gives the concept of truth the central place in his analysis.

It is also useful to contrast Wittgenstein's approach to Russell's theory of judgment (which Wittgenstein also criticized in the Traactatus). For Russell, judging that such and such is a matter of a relation between a subject and a list of things (such as objects, properties and relations). So Russell's approach is the opposite to Wittgenstein's: you start with ontology and give the list of things that exist in the world, and then you try to explain judgment or meaning by relating the subject with the things which exist according to your ontology. And what was wrong in Russell's analysis from Wittgenstein's point of view is that he neglected the concept of truth; nothing in Russell explains why standing in a relation to some things allows one to form meaningful and true judgements, while it is not the case when a subject related to some other things. Wittgenstein answer was that unless we think about the things from which the world is made as something the can essentially occur within facts, we will have no way of explaining how it is possible to judge anything about the world, or represent it in language.

Yes, the truth condition is the meaning expressed by P. As per your statement, this is a requirement for truth. And, interpretation is required for the expression of this truth condition (the meaning). Therefore interpretation is a requirement for truth. Do you not understand this? — Metaphysician Undercover

"Interpretation is required for truth" only indirectly via the fixing of meaning, but the truth of the sentence--given some determinate interpretation--is not itself open to interpretation.

Also, as I already told you, I completely reject your assumption that all interpretations are subjective by their nature, because there's nothing in the concept itself to suggest that this must be the case.

So your argument is both fallacious and is based on a false premise.

Here's a simply example to illustrate my point. Cows depend on grass for food, but does it follow that cows are like grass, or that they share some of their properties in common? (that they are green like the grass etc.) Obviously not - so the existence of some dependence relation between two things doesn't license you to infer anything from the properties of the one to the properties of the other. So even if I grant you your premise (which I don't) that meaning is in some sense subjective (--grass), it will not follow that truth is also subjective (--cows) only because it is dependent on meaning.

How do you propose that there can be a fixed meaning for P, when meaning is subject to interpretation? — Metaphysician Undercover

As I already told you several times, "meaning is open to interpretation" only on the linguistic or semantic level, that is, when there is a possibility of choosing between different things that a sentence can mean in a particular language. But what each of those possible 'meanings' mean is itself objective and not open to interpretation. On my view, to understand a sentence is to know its truth condition, and to know its truth conditions means to know in which circumstances the sentence is true and when it is false. So the 'meaning' itself, so to speak, consist in objective knowledge, or an ability to discriminate between the obtaining or non obtaining of objective states of affairs (namely the truth conditions) -- and nothing that you said shows that this is impossible to achieve.

Under Platonic realism, mathematical terms like "two", 'three", "circle", and "square", have eternal fixed meaning, through the assumption of eternal "Forms". There is no need for interpretation, because what these words mean (the meaning) is fixed eternally by these Forms, regardless of whether they are interpreted or not. — Metaphysician Undercover

All this stuff about forms is irrelevant to what I'm saying. I said that what a sentence means is truth conditions, but platonic forms themselves are not truth conditions but universals. The words 'circle' 'or square' don't say anything by themselves which is true or false, but only when they occur in sentence ("the table in my room is square").

You tried to avoid this problem by referring to a "fixed" meaning, but there is no such fixed meaning, unless we assume Platonic Forms as the ideas which exist independently of human subjects, that fix the meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

You don't need platonic forms, since you can simply use ordinary physical objects to fix the references of your terms. So if you take a sentence like "cats fly" and decide what would count as a cat and what would count as flying (and perhaps some other things), then you've fixed an objective meaning for the sentence - that is, your sentence now is 'correlated' with objective states of affairs (its truth and falsehood is sensitive to how the world is like). So for meaning to be objective it need not exist somehow 'in itself' and independently of human beings. We 'construct' meaning by correlating our language with the world, but that which we mean is objective by virtue of the existence of such correlations.

I'm not confusing meaning and truth Fafner. You said P is true, "if the truth condition expressed by P obtains. I said "the truth condition expressed by P" is necessarily an interpretation of P. And since this is the condition for truth, then interpretation is a condition for truth as well. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes you are confusing meaning and truth. Meaning is what P expresses (namely a truth condition), and truth is determined by whether the truth condition obtains. They are completely different things, and interpretation concerns only the former, not the later. Can't you see the difference between asking "what P means?" and "is what P means true?" One is a semantic question, the other is not.

If you want to assume a fixed meaning for P, then we can assume eternal Platonic Forms. Is that how you propose to define "objective truth", through reference to Platonic Forms? I am ready to oblige, if you recognize that objective truth requires a fixed meaning, and a fixed meaning is derived from something like Platonic Forms, then I am ready to accept this definition of "objective truth". There is such a thing as objective truth, if there is such a thing as Platonic Forms (fixed meaning). — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how platonic forms are relevant here. Truth as I defined it, simply means the obtainment of a truth condition, and a truth condition could be anything you want. If the truth condition expressed by a sentence is that cats fly (whatever that means), then the truth condition will involve cats and whatever is relevant to their flying. You don't need platonic forms to talk about truth conditions because anything can count as a truth conditions, as far as truth is concerned.

I did not say that you said it. Notably, I'm showing you that you're conflating truth with either fact/reality or true statements. Neither is acceptable. Both fail to be able to account for what kinds of things can be true and what makes them so.

To say that "the existence of dinosaurs is one example"(of a truth) is to either call the past existence of dinosaurs "a truth" or a true statement "a truth". — creativesoul

First, as I already said, I'm not trying to define truth via facts or reality. I'm not saying that truth is identical or equivalent to such and such things, so there's no conflation of anything in what I say.

Secondly, the concept of truth obviously does apply to reality in a very straightforward way: what a statement does after all is say is how things are in reality if it is true -- and if it is true, then it means that things in reality are exactly the way the statement says they are. So if the statement is about dinosaurs, there is a truth concerning dinosaurs, and there's nothing wrong in saying this.

And it is not the same as conflating the dinosaurs themselves with truth or whatever.

Such and such is a true statement in this case. You're conflating true statements with what makes them so. — creativesoul

No I'm not. You are reading your own metaphysical views into my words. There's no distinctions on my view between statements and what makes them true. A statement just is saying that so and so is the case (or not), and you cannot 'baypass' the statement and ask what makes it true, because the statement itself already tells you (by virtue of being a meaningful expression) how things stand if it is true or if it is false.

It is not. Let me clarify, because this is crucial to understand.

One can use a pan without ever using the term "pan". One can form thought/belief without ever being able to use the terms "thought/belief". — creativesoul

This metaphor is irrelevant, because you never bothered to tell what exactly you yourself mean by the term 'correspondence', so it is simply not clear what it means to "use correspondence" without using the word itself.

All thought/belief presupposes it's own truth(correspondence to fact/reality). That is precisely how thought/belief works, regardless of whether or not you write the word "correspondence". — creativesoul

Here you are just asserting things without any argument.

Second, drawing mental correlations between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or one's own state of mind does not require metacognition. — creativesoul

So what does it require?

And anyway, I don't understand what this story about mental correlations has to do with truth in the first place.

So a language independent truth is not equivalent to truth? — creativesoul

I didn't mean it as some sort of general definition of truth as your post implied. I didn't say what you've ascribed to me in that post ("truth is equivalent to historic states of affairs").

You're conflating truth and reality(states of affairs/events/happenings/etc). — creativesoul

It is just a form of speaking, "there exists a truth..." is just another way of saying that such and such is true.

Not using the term "correspondence" is not equivalent to not using correspondence. — creativesoul

It is. If I didn't use the word then I didn't use the word, period.

You're in the very process of presupposing correspondence between your expressions here and what was written earlier. — creativesoul

What do you mean?

To quite the contrary, if you know that you're looking at an apple, then you have already drawn a multitude of very complex correlations between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or oneself. It is a mistake to speak about 'wanting' to correlate... — creativesoul

Then I don't understand what you mean by 'correlation'. By virtue of what the mental states are supposed to become correlated in your story, if not by the subject? By accident? Or by God?

All creatures without complex language are incapable of metacognition. Knowing that one is having a sensory perception is a metacognitive endeavor. Your target is missing the mark. — creativesoul

But you are the one who brought up this idea of correlation between mental states, so it is you who are presupposing metacognition.

So, truth is equivalent to historic states of affairs/happenings/events/they way things were? That would be to conflate truth and fact/reality. — creativesoul

I've just gave an example of a language-independent truth as you've asked. I didn't say anything about this being equivalent to truth.

Do you have a candidate/example of one of these objective truths? — creativesoul

The existence of dinosaurs is one such example.

That is precisely what we're doing my friend. Verification/falsification methods presuppose truth as correspondence. If things in the world are the same as what the sentence says about them, then they are true(verified) and false(falsified) if not. — creativesoul

You are not following. You've said that we need correspondence in order to explain x y and z. I've explained x y and z to you without using the notion of correspondence. This shows that correspondence is a redundant concept as I claimed.

When we disagree, what is it that we are disagreeing on - our use of words, or the state-of-affairs that the words refer to? — Harry Hindu

Of course it's the later.

What does it mean to not address your arguments? What does it mean to have something wrong or right with your argument? — Harry Hindu

Two things can be wrong with an argument: it is logically invalid (the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises), and/or one or more of its premises is false. Everything else is irrelevant as far as the soundness of an argument goes.

By 'irrelevant' I mean that most of what you say doesn't address my arguments. You say many things that even if they are true, they don't show that something is wrong with my arguments, so I don't think they are worth arguing about.