They seemed to have worked well for the United States and its capitalists in the era between its conception and the second world war in which government expenditure was about 3-5% of GDP. — Tzeentch

You mean the era of Railway Labor Act, Davis-Bacon (prevailing wage) Act, the National Labor Relations Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Fair Employment Practice Commission...?

The era of major breakthroughs in government legislation controlling how corporations can act.

The era of the gift tax, sales taxes...

The era when Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act.

The era with the fastest rise in marginal tax rates in US history to it's peak in 1944.

That era...?

When I say "I believe that you are American but I could be wrong" I'm not saying "I believe that you are American but I am wrong" and I'm not saying "I believe that you are American but in some other possible world I am wrong". — Michael

Yes. We all agree that beliefs could be wrong.

"I believe that you are American but I could be wrong" is sensible, and possibly true, even if you are in fact an American. — Michael

Again, it's just not clear how you're getting here. The "...I could be wrong" cannot be true if the proposition is it's referring to is true.

I'm not wrong then I can't be wrong, but then via modus tollens it then follows that if I can be wrong then I am wrong. — Michael

Draw that out for me...?

Even if my belief is true it is still the case that it could be false. — Michael

I just don't see how you're getting here.

Here's Oxford Reference...

A necessary truth is one that could not have been otherwise. It would have been true under all circumstances. A contingent truth is one that is true, but could have been false.

The point is all about tense. The definition given here is in the past tense (modal) 'could have been'. Not 'still could be'.

So if p is not a necessary truth it still only means that p could have been otherwise, not that p still could be otherwise. As such one's belief that p is true, p not being a necessary truth doesn't seem to imply that p could be false, only that it could have been.

For Ramsey, "p is true" means the same thing as "p". So he must agree, I think, that to assert that p and to assert that it is true that p mean the same. — Banno

I think Ramsey's redundancy is better thought of as (sure I'm quoting here but can't for the life of me find it, so call it a paraphrase) 'there's noting more to asserting "p is true" than there is to asserting "p".

The significance of 'nothing more...' is that it allows for "p is true" in some cases to mean nothing at all (rather than mean the same as "p") Saying 'it doesn't add anything' isn't quite the same as saying 'it means the same'.

Ramsey's position is clever here, I think, because he avoids what he saw as the excess of full redundancy in that 'true' still had a purpose. Using "everything John says is 'true'" as an example. That can't possibly mean the same as {insert everything John says}. It's just that adding "... is true" to each and every thing John actually says, adds nothing.

I think I'm right in saying that Ramsey still would agree with your broad point, but for him, the question of 'what is truth' cannot be answered without a discussion of belief (which I understand you see as almost unrelated?). Ramsey saw the meat of the matter to be in what saying "p" actually means in the first place.

Cheers. Not a bad puzzle. — Banno

Likewise. An endless pursuit, I think, but no bad thing that.

Typo... not sure what this is. — Banno

Sorry, should be "and is met when the proposition is..."

Registering by bafflement at the criteria....

Nice rendering of Ramsey, though. — Banno

Thanks. His work on truth pretty much guides my thinking on the matter.

Government spending in the US has been on a steady rise since the early 20th century — Tzeentch

@Xtrix was talking about the scale of government (interventions, taxation, regulation). Why are you talking about spending?

A government of one person could have a single law which completely empties the treasury and gives it all to Jeff Bezos. How is that not a 'small government'? Spending is not a measure of government size, the quantity of governing is.

when one says that such-and-such is true, I don't thinks, bar the pragmatics, that they re saying anything more than that such-and-such. — Banno

But this is not what the T-sentence says. The T-sentence says that "p" is true iff p.

What you've given above is an account of my actions regarding p - asserting "p is true" is the same as asserting p - Which is Ramsey's position.

In other words, asserting "p is true" does the same thing as asserting p (in the cases we're concerned with here).

The T-sentence goes beyond this redundancy to claim there is a property 'truth' which attaches to propositions and is met is the proposition is...[and then restates the proposition but pretending not to be stating it by omitting the quotation marks]

For clarity...

If someone asks (of an assertion of mine) "is that true" I usually take it to mean something like "if I used that policy would I likely find the same success you did?". In other words, "do you think we can share this modelling assumption"



I don't take it to mean "does your assertion have some ineffable property we all somehow share despite it not seeming to serve any purpose nor have any warrant to think it's even there."

So you do not take your own assertions to be true?

Ok, then.

I had thought you at least sincere... — Banno

Again, this is question-begging. You're taking the meaning of 'true' that you hold to construct the faux surprise that I would not hold my assertions to meet that criteria.

But it is your meaning of 'true' we're disputing here.

Yes, if I agree with you about what 'true' means, then it would be surprising if I didn't hold my assertions to be thus defined. But I don't agree with you about what 'true' means, so it is not surprising.

The government has jurisdiction in a given territory over which it has the supreme and final authority. — NOS4A2

Ah! so now we're talking about control over jurisdiction.

Well, if you want control over some jurisdiction, then get off your lazy arse and compete for it! Start a political party, start a separatist campaign, maybe orchestrate a revolution, or an invasion... If you can't stand the heat of the competition though...that's not their fault is it?

Or do we have different message now to the independent booksellers trying to compete with Amazon?

you are making an assertion, and making an assertion is attaching a truth value to a statement. You can't make an assertion without asserting that some statement is true. — Banno

in order to have this discussion we make assertions, and in order to make assertions, we make use of truth — Banno

This just seems like begging the question.

To make the assertion "Rory Gallagher is the best guitarist in the world", I think of Rory's guitar playing, perhaps imagine it, or recall an opinion I had of it, do the same for other guitar players, see how each makes me feel, render that comparison into the words I've learnt will do the job of getting someone else to respond accordingly.

If my interlocutor seems unconvinced (furrowed brow, shaking head...) I might add "...it's true!", having learnt that those words will often yield a reconsideration, at least.

I'm not seeing, in any of that game any warrant for introducing the concept of 'truth'. The game seems to play out perfectly well without it. It seems at risk of become it's very own beetle. None of us here are adding ..."is true" to the end of our assertions, we seem to be mentally capable of making those assertions without running them through and additional concept filter in our minds that we call 'truth'.

We just infer that the policy seems likely to succeed (believing, claiming, asserting, using "...is true"...), then we enact it.

Where do we need a concept of truth in there? The entire concept seems, dare I say, redundant.

We understand that our actions do have an effect on the World, Isaac. How many other living creatures/species have understood that?

To understand that is really important. — ssu

Your talent for for the irrelevant is impressive.

Why are you telling me this?

I don’t recall that being a reason you gave… — Luke

That's because I was giving reasons why we might say "“there are plums in the icebox” is false".

You then asked for reasons we'd use to decide whether there's plums in the icebox. I took that to mean strategies we'd use (since we can't 'use' reasons, we 'give' reasons).

Two different questions.

As to the first. For what reason might we say "“there are plums in the icebox” is false"... I can't see how a lack of plums in the icebox even reaches the top ten. It would be a rubbish reason.

If I said "“there are plums in the icebox” is false" and you said "why did you say that?" I guarantee in most cases "because there's no plums in the icebox" will not be considered sufficient reason...

The follow-up question will be "that's as may be, but why did you say it in that weird way?"

Because yours don’t seem like the sort of reasons we would use to decide whether “there are plums in the icebox” is true or false. — Luke

Reasons we'd use to decide?

Look in the fridge?

Ask someone we trust?

Which of those had anything to to with your reasons ...

for our saying e.g. that “snow is white” is true, or that “there are plums in the icebox” is false. — Luke

I suggested a better reason for why we would say that a statement is true or false would be e.g. the (lack of) correspondence between the statement “there are plums in the icebox” and what we find in the icebox. — Luke

Why's that a better reason?

This discussion was about the difference between how governments behaved and the free market. In fact, you brought it up. — Tzeentch

This discussion was about the difference between how 1 governments behaved and 2 the free market.

You see how that's two things, yes?

How governments maintain their control over the ability to use violence (1)

How corporations maintain their control over free markets (2)

You call (1) a monopoly because you failed to compete successfully of the ability to use violence.

You don't call (2) a monopoly when people fail to compete successfully for control of markets.

I'm asking why.

I think we're done here. — Tzeentch

What?

A random quote from pages back and we're done?

I've curated quite a number of odd ways to avoid conceding a point in an argument here (though curiously never "I see, you're right"), but this one is a corker.

You don't seem to understand the idea a free market. — Tzeentch

I'm not talking about a free market. I'm talking about competition for the ability to use violence. You claim the government has a monopoly in that competition.

They don't. They're just doing better in it than you.

Correspondence. “There are plums in the icebox” is false because I looked in there and found none - is a better reason imo than wanting something for/from others. — Luke

So your go to expression to communicate the lack of plums in the fridge is “"There are plums in the icebox” is false"? Not "there aren't any plums in the fridge"?

If you want to keep asking questions in a discussion forum, don’t be surprised when you get answers. — NOS4A2

OK. What is the difference between Amazon competing for control over internet sales and government competing for control over violence?

You say one is a monopoly, the other isn't.

The government will not let you compete. — Tzeentch

This has already been answered. Your miserable lack of success at competing is not the same as the government not letting you compete. If you want some of the share of the ability to use violence, get a bigger army. Loser!

However, the government will not let you do this. It will throw you jail, and punish you for even trying. — Tzeentch

That's the competition. If your security force can't compete with the government's that's their weakness. Toughen up!

To offer better services at a lower cost, in order to persuade the townsfolk to voluntarily choose their services over the local services. — Tzeentch

Where do you get this garbage from? Have you been at the Ayn Rand again?

These are not the main reasons I would think of for our saying e.g. that “snow is white” is true, or that “there are plums in the icebox” is false. — Luke

OK. What reasons might you be thinking of?

That is the essence of free competition. — Tzeentch

So what? Declaring it 'free competition' is begging the question. I'm asking about why violence is not seen the same way and the answer you're giving me is "because we give it a different name".

You understand that competition entails using power to compete? — Tzeentch

Same as government's. Or are you just too weak and lazy to muster your own army and compete?

crime rings are not participating in a free market. — Tzeentch

I never said they did. They compete for control by violence. They gain it in some small areas but can't compete with the power of the government to reach whole cities. Just like small bookshops vs Amazon.

To be fair, it was a shit question based on a false analogy. — NOS4A2

I think everyone was quite clear you thought it a false analogy from your opening remark.

This is a discussion forum. If you're wanting somewhere just to keep a record of 'stuff you think' might I suggest a notepad?

The correspondence and coherence theories of truth both theorise about what does.

It seems to me that the deflationary theory is not inconsistent with either of these and that either could be tacked on to the deflationary theory for an account of what makes statements true. — Luke

Possibly, but it doesn't mean there is a necessity for them to.

I do believe there is a reason why we say that some statements are true and some are false, though. Don’t you? — Luke

Yes, I've written about it on this thread. I think there are numerous reasons to do with wanting to get others to believe us, wanting to show faith in others, wanting to give an indication of confidence...

Probably because a monopoly in trade has nothing to do with a monopoly on violence. — NOS4A2

So they're different because they're different. Great explanation!

Amazon cannot stop you from setting up an internet sales company — Tzeentch

Yes, it can. It can leverage it's capital to prevent you from gaining any market share, it can use it's army of corporate lawyers to prevent you from competing fairly, it can use it's cross-domain power to make it difficult for you to obtain the subsidiary services you need (like servers, or smart devices for example). There are tons of ways Amazon can prevent me from setting up a competing service.

The difference here is that you've arbitrarily decided to call al those ways 'fair competition'.

It seems like what you're doing is blaming Amazon for your failed enterprise, when it is you yourself who is to blame for not being able to provide a better or cheaper product that people want to buy from you. — Tzeentch

Seems to me you're blaming the government for your failure to rouse a bigger, more loyal army, when it's you who simply isn't charismatic enough to develop such a loyal following.

Does a government let you compete freely on the market? No. Under no circumstance. It won't even allow you to offer your product, let alone compete. — Tzeentch

Does Amazon let me compete freely? No, it does everything in its power to maintain its market dominance.

It doesn't matter if you're able to provide a better product than the government, as soon as you try to put it on the market, you are stopped either by law or by force. — Tzeentch

Violence is not a product.

You then try to make an argument that if only you're able to get above a certain threshold of customers, you would be able to violently overthrow the government, implying this is the same as how companies compete on the market. This is of course not the case, and no such threshold is necessary for a normal business to compete on the market. — Tzeentch

You're saying that a corporation does not need customers to compete?

You'll find that it's perfectly possible for large and small companies to exist alongside each other. That's called free competition. Smaller companies often enjoy benefits that make their products cheaper to produce or more attractive locally, and they may compete on that basis. For the government's monopoly on violence that is not so. — Tzeentch

So the only people who commit violence are the government? Where the hell do you live?

not much of a theory of truth if it doesn’t offer an account of what makes a statement true. — Luke

That begs the question. You're assuming anything does.

Can you arrest a police officer or any government agent and jail him for committing violence? — NOS4A2

Again, I can try.

What I'm asking is why failure against government is called monopoly, but failure against a corporation is just 'free market competition'.

The term “legitimate” underlies the principle. The principle does not imply that the state is the only entity committing violence, but it is the only entity authorized to commit violence. — NOS4A2

See above. I'm not looking for an etymology lesson. I'm asking you what the difference is.

Those are crimes, though. You’d be tried and imprisoned should you commit that violence. — NOS4A2

Yep, there are consequences. And I might fail.

As it is with setting up an internet market. So tell me again how it's different.

I can be violent, the government might stop me, or there might be consequences I don't like. The government apparently thereby have the monopoly on violence.

I can set up an internet sales company. Amazon might stop me, or there might be consequences I don't like. Amazon apparently don't thereby have the monopoly on internet sales companies.

Which sort of violence can you do? — NOS4A2

Murder, torture, beatings...the usual. Do you live in Utopia by any chance?

As complexity increases, it may be better to start discussing self-deception or, more neutrally, better or worse frameworks for editing beliefs. — Pie

Yes, exactly where I'm coming from. We have to choose between both competing modeling approaches (Lysenko) and competing theories (Russia, Covid, Climate Change..to name a few controversial ones). More often than not, this cannot be done with empirical evidence. The evidence simply supports both models/theories perfectly unproblematically.

So we need ways, habits, which help us choose fruitfully.

But no, expediency and pragmatism result in cover-ups and distortions and exaggerations 'for our own good' and they always get exposed eventually and are always corrosive of trust and meaning. We have to trust our institutions and experts, therefore it is essential that they are trustworthy, and that means not pragmatically or expediently truthful but brutally honest and truthful about their own limitations — unenlightened

I think we're saying the same thing using different words. It seems you're talking about be 'truthful' about methods and limitations, I'm talking about being pragmatic about theories and plans.

The problem as I see it, is underdetermination. Even with 100% honest scientists, there'd still be a range of theories, all of which are well supported by the evidence. We need to choose between them, we can't do so in the basis of the evidence, so pragmatically, we need some method.

What seems to me to be the current method is yelling at one's detractors that one's pet theory is 'true' whilst theirs is 'lies'. That's the usage I'm criticising.

I think we can fare better than any people in history before us. Especially in the West we are so prosperous that having to make dramatic changes out of necessity will not collapse our societies. When our environment radically changes around us, we can adapt. — ssu

How exactly do you think the problem of climate change came about?

No, but what I am saying is that we are seeing science being hijacked by commercial interests to some extent, and by career considerations, and so on, and that fuels conspiracy theories and radical scepticism. — unenlightened

Absolutely, and we should all be deeply concerned about that, but is truth relevant here? Do the hijacked scientists actually lie, or do they pick their results carefully, craft their statistics, twist their wording...to support the narrative the commercial interests prefer?

I think talk of truth here is the problem, not the solution. Talk of scientific theories being 'true' and all the dogmatism around that approach is part of what's caused the failure of trust. The making of promises one cannot keep. 'Truth' doesn't much belong in scientific discussion at all (only perhaps to keep out actual fraudsters). Quality matters. Things like experimental power (in the statistical sense) are important.

We have to trust our institutions where we defer to experts whose actual opinion we're not capable of judging. I agree with you about the threat this represents to society. I think the solution, though, is more acknowledgement of uncertainty, more openness about modeling assumptions, more discussion of theory choice (where the evidence underdetermines)...

In other words, less talk of truth and lies. More talk of pragmatism and expediency.

You know this stuff in in print above don't you?

Everyone can read what you actually wrote and what I actually responded to.

Rewriting history doesn't tend to work less than an hour after the event when what happened is in print. Try a little while later.

Consider, then, the case of the scientist who fabricates the results of his experiment. Imagine that this becomes endemic to the extent of near 50 % of published papers. Science, surely then, is dead, it has become completely unreliable and thus meaningless. — unenlightened

Yeah, totally. The results one gets are like the cake in the fridge. If you know they're one thing when you say they're another, you're lying.

Do you seriously think even remotely close to 50% of scientists could get away with lying about their results? The conspiracy would have to be enormous.

But even so, my point still stands. Most of the propositions 'truth' is considered a property of to are not spoken by the scientist who obtained the results. They're spoken by others. So 'truth' means "I trust/believe this scientist, not that one"

"So you say truth can't escape from mere expediency? is that true?"

Whatever you posit as a theory of truth already relies on a foundation of truth... — Banno

I don't see how. If I say "Rory Gallagher is the best guitarist ever, it's true" do you really think the meaning of 'it's true' there relies on any kind of logic? I'm just emphasising my belief.

So why need "Truth can't escape from mere expediency, it's true" be any different?

You're assuming we're all playing a certain type of game, but I don't see any reason why we must be, and most times seems to me we aren't.

Yes, the monopoly on violence is seized and held through violence — NOS4A2

But I can be violent. Am I the exception? Do you find it impossible to be violent? The government do not seem to me to have the monopoly at all.

If I were violent, there would be consequences, it would be difficult...


But if 'difficult' is the criteria for holding a monopoly, then certainly large corporations hold several monopolies.

Which is what all the small government bullshit boils down to: a view that human beings are essentially sociopathic. — Xtrix

Seem so. It's the twists and turns taken to avoid just admitting that which fascinate me.

Existence. That's the parents' intention - to force a child to exist. — Tzeentch

Do you force a soldier to become a soldier? No.

You can't force a child to exist. They already exist.

I suppose technically you could intend to force a child to exists in the same way as I could indent to pick up a mountain, or fly to the moon, but I don't see the moral relevance and certainly such lunacy is not common.

it only has this power of persuasion because of it's logical implications. — Banno

Does it though? I can still see the pragmatist winning here too. I believe the story I'm told "It's true, it's true!" because of the social implications of someone using such an expression. It's often better for me that way, things are more likely to work out how I expect them under that policy.

If we trust the speaker, and we trust their judgment then isn't what we're really doing simply 'contracting out' our own expediency-obsessed inference processes to someone else's. I'm not seeing an escape from mere expediency there.

In other words, I don't take notice of "it's true" because of its logical implications. I take notice of it because of yet more expediency. It simply works out better for me under such a policy.