This is the issue. If a proposition conforms to independent reality how? Is it structurally similar? — Terrapin Station

It describes it, and I’ve already given my explanation of what a description is. The cat is on the mat. That proposition describes/represents a particular cat being on a particular mat by using words with those particular meanings/referents. All of that comes from me. However, the reality of that particular cat being on that particular mat has nothing to do with me, and that reality is what allows my proposition to correspond to it.

The real question is, will a gun make me, cause me to be, safer? And the answer to the question is no. No, period. — tim wood

You can only be sure of that if you ignore everything I’ve shared in this thread.

But therein lies the truth: guns often prove to be a cure much, much worse than any problem they're supposed to solve. . — tim wood

Again, you have to flatly ignore the research of John Lott and all that Hitchens cites in his book to make this claim. I’m not saying mass availability of guns doesn’t cause problems, but it seems only prejudiced to dismiss entirely the possible benefits of their ownership by law-abiding people.

So meanings, concepts, mental imagery can somehow exist or amount to something outside of a person's mind on your view? — Terrapin Station

No.

(Otherwise, how are such things matching something else independent of thinking about it and making a judgment about whether they match? (and if they're only mental, how is someone (or something?) seeing your mental content to check if it matches (and if something, how is it doing this?)) — Terrapin Station

Because the thing they’re matching is not in a person’s mind. I’ve been asking the whole time: What role does a person play in correspondence, beyond thinking up the proposition?

Checking whether a proposition matches is beside the point. What I’m saying is they can match whether anyone checks or not. There’s an independent reality in play; if a proposition conforms to it then it’s true regardless. A proposition conforming to reality would mean it described a specific event, such as a particular cat being on a particular mat, with that event being a reality.

This is where we got to last time. I gave an explanation and you went quiet.

Descriptions obtain via a set of words with particular meanings representing a person, object or event by way of concept and mental imagery. I describe a cat on a mat. I’m referring to a particular cat and mat, and the concept of being on something. All it takes for my proposition to be true is for that cat to be on that mat.

So the only way it can be true when you judge it to be false is that it's true to someone else (or to you at a later time). Otherwise, it's not true when you judge it to be false. — Terrapin Station

You’ve said you believe in objective facts. If it’s an objective fact the cat is on the mat, then that proposition matches that fact. That would be the case even if no one ever finds out whether the cat really is on the mat. If two people judge differently, then the one judging that proposition to be true must be correct, given that objective fact.

The way it obtains is via a judgment about whether the meaning "matches" the fact. — Terrapin Station

Then how can a proposition still be true even if I judge it to be false?

Correspondence isn't.
— creativesoul

How do you believe the relation obtains outside of a judgment? — Terrapin Station

Did you ever explain what possible role judgement has in correspondence, beyond a person thinking up a proposition?

The cat is on the mat. If that’s an objective fact, then the proposition is true even if someone judges it to be false. This shows judgement has nothing to do with whether the proposition is true/corresponds.

The statement is an appeal to fear and hatred: side with those who support ‘the possibility of armed citizens’, OR be associated with Palestinian suicide bombers, Taliban and anyone who kidnaps women for rape and sex-slave trade. This isn’t feminism. It’s a false dichotomy. — Possibility

If feminists are by definition incapable of posing false dichotomies, then fine, they’re not feminists.

We don't perceive pain and pleasure. We interpret certain sensory information as painful or pleasurable. — T Clark

What’s your distinction between interpreting and perceiving here?

You cannot be serious. — Possibility

The statement identifies gun control as a means of oppression, especially of women, and desires it be resisted.

AFA is NOT a feminist group. It is a group of women who support the right to carry guns. There’s a difference. — Possibility

Hitchens quotes their website at the time:

Those who push for gun control are of the same mind-set as Palestinian suicide bombers and the Taliban who kidnap women for rape and sex-slave trade. Both don’t like the possibility of armed citizens, in these cases, especially an armed woman.

Fair enough if they’re not principally a feminist group, but that sounds like an expression of feminism to me.

I know very little about Australia and its politics beyond those statistics, so can’t comment any more about that.

The issue I’m concerned with here is whether allowing legal gun ownership deters violent crime. It seems to me effective gun laws would be based on a true understanding of that deterrence (if there truly is one, and whatever it might be worth).

As for the argument regarding gender equality, to suggest that feminists should be supporting the right to carry a weapon because it gives women a more ‘equal’ ability to defend themselves that wouldn’t be there without the gun is beyond ridiculous — Possibility

Feminist groups already do (or did at the time Hitchens’ book was written) support the right to carry guns. Hitchens gives Armed Females of America as an example.

and attempts to direct the focus away from genuine feminist issues - such as the use of broad gender statistics which perpetuate the assumption that women are ‘generally’ less capable than men. — Possibility

I don’t see that it does; it just highlights an aspect of the debate that creates a contradiction in a standard left-wing world view.

As a woman, if I believe I need a gun to feel safe, then there is something fundamentally askew - and it’s NOT with the world - it’s either with how I interact with the world, or how I think the world sees me. — Possibility

The statistic I quoted isn’t about women feeling safe; it’s about men and women alike being safer when they’re allowed to carry handguns, with the greater difference being among women.

So a gun owner could choose between surrendering his weapons to the authorities, keeping them in defiance of the law (and identifying as a criminal), or unloading them on the black market, perhaps for a tidy profit. One can imagine a flood of weapons in the hands of violent criminals and organised crime syndicates, and a shrinking window of opportunity to get away with activities such as armed robberies before the full force of the new laws came into effect. — Possibility

I have a couple of problems with this explanation. Why would regular people unload their guns onto a market whose buyers are criminals, and so likely to use those weapons against them? Perhaps a few unwise people did that, but there’d need to be some proper evidence that a lot of people did.

And it makes no sense to say there was a “shrinking window of opportunity to get away with activities such as armed robberies before the full force of the new laws came into effect.” Why would a disarmed public make it more difficult to get away with armed robbery?

I don’t know what happened to crime in Australia after those two years. But I think the point is simply that the claim less legal guns equals less violent crime isn’t a straightforward one to make.

Sure, though here’s something I quoted earlier:

Brazil and Russia, both countries with far tougher gun laws than the USA, have murder rates four times higher than America.

If you look on the web, there seem to have been a bunch of studies, the results of which seem to be pretty inconclusive. That's for the US. It is my understanding that gun ownership in the US is really different than the UK. Many more people here own guns and it's relatively easy to get them. Is that also true for Australia? — T Clark

I’ve had a quick look and there is indeed an ongoing debate.

Gun ownership is tightly restricted in the UK. I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but according to Hitchens’ book they tightened their gun laws after ‘96 and violent crime went up significantly over the first two years.

Given the vast majority of people in possession of legal guns (according to the statistics I’ve quoted) don’t commit any serious crimes, I’m wondering how it could be that violent crime instead rises in tandem with liberal gun laws. Another thing to consider is that England’s crime rate was incredibly low at the beginning of the 20th century, compared with what it is now, and at that time we had very liberal gun laws ourselves.

The problem with such figures is that they don't account for other differences in the areas that they are looking at, such as population density. The places with the strictest gun laws are ususally cities, which have higher crime rates across the board. — Echarmion

According to Hitchens, Lott found that “the largest drops in violent crime following the introduction of legal concealed handguns came in the most urban counties with the highest population and greatest crime rates.” Lott is said to have gone into immense detail, sometimes looking county by county at the effects of changes in gun law.

The vast majority of people behaves "well" insofar as most people respect the law to a wide extend. However, the more guns that are around, the easier those guns end up on the black market. In countries with strict gun laws, acquiring a gun is highly risky, because very few people have access to guns and therefore the avenues are easier to police. — Echarmion

It seems the widespread availability of guns does cause this problem. However, this doesn’t necessarily speak in favour of strict gun laws. Hitchens again:

Brazil and Russia, both countries with far tougher gun laws than the USA, have murder rates four times higher than America.

But I think that one of the most important factors, and one that is often overlooked, is culture. In an european country, where guns are rarely seen outside the hands of the police, people simply do not tend to think of a gun as an option or a solution. Getting a gun (either legally or illegally) requires planning and effort, and this alone provides some amount of protection. — Echarmion

But there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that strict gun laws do provide protection.

In the USA, so-called ‘hot’ burglaries, committed while the victim is in the house, comprised 13 per cent of the total. In England and Wales they accounted for about 50 per cent of the total.

I’ll say again I agree with Hitchens that allowing guns in the UK is not the best option, but he makes a strong case for it being a fair option.

Generally, concealed carry is much more heavily regulated than open carry. So, the law doesn't agree with your assessment. Many places in the US allow open carry while most require a permit which may be difficult to obtain for concealed carry. — T Clark

I see. I intuitively thought open carry would be more restricted that concealed carry, but there you go.

I am very skeptical of these statistics. If you look at the data, it is very ambiguous whether or not gun ownership has an effect on violent crime. — T Clark

I haven’t read Lott’s book, but according to Hitchens his findings, though challenged, weren’t refuted. That was the case 20 years ago anyway.

Hitchens gives crime figures for Australia during its first two years of firearms restrictions, after a 1996 massacre in Tasmania:

...armed robberies rose by 73 per cent, unarmed robberies by 28 per cent, assaults by 17 per cent and kidnapping by 38 per cent. Murder did fall by 9 per cent, but manslaughter increased by 32 per cent.

I fully agree that not everyone should be allowed a gun. And it seems prudent for those who do carry them to keep them concealed in public (I thought people had to by law anyway). But here’s something else quoted by Hitchens from Lott’s book:

Violent crimes are 81 percent higher in states without non-discretionary laws. For murder, states that ban the concealed carrying of guns have murder rates 127 percent higher than states with the most liberal concealed-carry laws.

And this:

In the period 1987 to 1996, Florida issued 380,000 concealed-carry licenses and revoked seventy-two because of crimes committed by the permit holder. Most of these crimes did not involve the use of the permitted gun.

Virginia and Texas were basically the same in this respect. So it appears that up until around 2000 at least (perhaps things have changed since) legal gun owners were behaving very well in those states.

Well whatever. That’s just you refusing to get the point. “Psychological need”. Glass houses mate.

. Neither is bounded by its own individual space.
— AJJ

What does this phrase refer to? What would that amount to, to be "bounded by its own individual space"? — Terrapin Station

There’s no empirically observable reason why the space I occupy should have anything to do with the space the floor beneath me occupies. It holds me up because my atoms interact with its, but why should they? That they do seems to be because the cosmos is unified; it occupies a unifying space.

Moving this discussion over here:

Are you suggesting that you or anyone else is presenting arguments or observations? Just curious. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I just gave one. You, however, have simply been asserting.

You've got to be joking. You observe "unified space"? Can you point to what you're looking at? — Terrapin Station

I observe that something over here can interact with something over there. Neither is bounded by its own individual space.

Explain how you're observing that "here and there are parts of space," please. — Terrapin Station

It seems to me that spatial relations must exist within space, which can’t itself be located anywhere and so must be immaterial and the thing which unifies the cosmos. You’re just insisting those relations are, and that’s that.

As opposed to argument or observation. What I observe about locations is they exist within a unified space (a thing is here relative to a thing over there, with here and there being parts of space). All you’re doing is refusing to make that observation and insisting it’s not the case.

I’ve noticed there’s a specific thread about this anyway so should post there about this instead.

That’s pure assertion, I’d say. Even accepting all that, the question remains: Where are locations? Locations have a location, sure, but where?

Again, as I wrote, "They are locations, and locations are always defined in terms of relative extensional relations."

So, for example, the Earth is located between the orbits or Venus and Mars. — Terrapin Station

It doesn’t matter how locations are defined. I’m asking, where are they? Where is “between the orbits of Venus and Mars” located? The answer, it seems to me, is “somewhere in space”. All locations are things within space.

Where is “somewhere on Earth” located? Somewhere in space. Space you say is “extensional relations”. Where are they located? You say they are themselves locations. But where are locations? They are things within space. What/where else are they?

My location is a location, I understand that. But where is it?

I misread your post. But maybe that’s a fair question: Where is my location located?

It would make no sense to say that locations have no location, right? — Terrapin Station

Sure, that was my point and objection to your view view that there isn’t anything with no location in time or space.

So where are “extensional relations” located?

So in your view matter isn’t extended within space? Just extended?

The universe has no location in time or space.
— frank

Sure it does. It is all locations of time and space. — Terrapin Station

Where are space and time located?

I understand all that perfectly well mate, no need for the daft questions. But isn’t correspondence theory your thing? You’re in effect arguing against yourself in my objective values thread here.

Anyway: I would personally say the relation of being a description obtains via a set of words with particular meanings representing a person, object or event by way of concept and mental imagery.

Please don’t ask never ending questions in disagreement. Just say if don’t agree, then explain your alternative.

Feel free to explicate that if that was really your intention, but without the questions.

All right mate, I figure you’re just messing around now. Good talk, all very interesting.

A description is a picture in words or representation of something.

It’s a matter of a proposition describing a state of affairs.

Your questions indicate the issue is around taking meanings to be identical to states of affairs, which is not something I’ve been saying. But fine: I agree that meanings are not identical to states of affairs. Now what?

And I’m saying your questions are irrelevant, since I haven’t said anything about meanings being identical to states of affairs.

I’m not saying those things. If I have you’ll have to quote where I did.

On correspondence theory, "The cat is on the mat" (a proposition, which we're denoting by putting it in quotation marks) matches the cat being on the mat (the state of affairs that the cat is on the mat).

I don’t see how the above is really any different from what I’ve just said, but whatever.

But I'll work with it for a moment. "If that state of affairs is actual" per what? What's making the determination if something described is actual? That's the question here. Let's detail how the determination is made, because that's the matching. — Terrapin Station

It’s actual if it’s actual. You’ve said in this thread you believe there are objective facts. How we tell something is an objective fact is beside the point; the point being that if a proposition matches an objective fact then it is true. I’m asking what role does a person play in this matching, beyond thinking up the proposition?