Another reason she's interesting is because very few philosophers in recent times have tried their hand at a complete, systematic "big picture" philosophy with many levels, from synoptic overview to ethical, even aesthetic advice for everyday life. One might say that's because it's been demonstrated to be a fruitless or hubristic endeavour, but really it hasn't; the twee tone of faux humility that's characterized much of academic philosophy in the 20th century, especially in the analytic tradition, has really just been more of a fashion statement and "house style." — gurugeorge

Maybe it a just me - but given you mentioned it I assume this is a fairly common view - but it seems clear that philosophers in general do think such an effort is fruitless (I'll ignore the hubris point, aside from saying that Rand was very directly hubristic in some of her comments about her own work).

The 20th century was rather a disaster for these big picture projects. Not only is it borderline impossible to have the breadth and depth of knowledge to adequately do such a thing, there are inherent issues with even trying. Like take a relatively simple example. So there was a fun idea at one point that logic was a metaphysically neutral discipline. The idea was that whatever we may disagree about philosophically or whatever, logic is the mediator no party involved can decry (when used validly).

But this is just an obviously false idea, especially once alternate logics started getting real development (starting with Intuintionistic Logic Heyting made based on Brouwer's intuitionism about math). Different logics make different metaphysical assumptions; intuitionistic logic is anti-realist (it was juxtaposed against math platonism for a reason).

We could even get into the Relativistic and Quantum mechanical stuff, where we couldn't even baldly assume Euclidean Geometry mapped onto the world and where issues of identity crop up (not to mention the interpretation issue). But that's not necessary, it's a fairly continuous widening that happened across many branches of philosophy. Starting from axioms and working out from there doesn't end up being particularly insightful because even that starting place has difficult issues. And that difficult bubbles outward to everything else.

Just look at the situation in ethics. Even among professionals, it's a nearly three way tie between deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics (though that latter one is a little less popular). If even that is so contentious, why would I want her read an attempt at a systematic regimentation which will necessarily leave out important bits of every discipline? As a discipline of learning increases in complexity (and thus the need of more and more specializiation) this sort of thing pretty much has to go. This is probably the source of stigma of philosophy not making progress. It continuously drills down, making issues clearer while creating ever more positions people can hold on every issue.

That's just one issue with Rand at the level of her approach. The actual quality (or lack thereof) is another matter (doesn't interest me, and from the general panning of her work in academia, it seems common a response).

Well, if the world is a formal system of sorts, then what's wrong with trying to find a link between the two? — Posty McPostface

Formal systems are by definition constructed things. They're systems of deduction we create from assumptions and derive results from using inference rules. That's nothing like reality. The problem is that the theorems are fundamentally about properties of formal systems. If that system can represent basic arithmetic, it must be either incomplete (there are truths within it which cannot be proved) or inconsistent (some contradictions can be proved). But notice, reality doesn't "represent" arithmetic. Reality is just (note: obviously philosophically controversial) the sum total of everything which is the case, it doesn't represent anything. It's not a formalism.

If there's a link between the two at all, it's only this: Quantum mechanics usually (barring quantum logic) makes use of standard mathematics (classical logic + ZFC set theory). Because of this, we are using a formal system which is necessarily incomplete, as per Godel (there are no known contradictions in standard math, so the system is incomplete). And that's it as far as I can tell. I don't see the direct connection to reality, QM isn't about mathematics but reality.

If different infinities have different values then is it really a definite quantity? — 3rdClassCitizen

Different levels infinities have different sizes. They're size is definite. "Infinity" is not one value.

Amount of real numbers = infinite
Amount of even real numbers = infinite
Does this mean that infinity divided by 2 equals itself?

The real numbers have a cardinality (size) larger than that of the even numbers. The even numbers have the same cardinality as the natural numbers, aleph-null, and so are "countably" infinite. The real numbers cannot be put into a one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers, being that the reals are a larger infinity. Hence the reals are "uncountably" infinite.

Godel's theorems only apply to formal systems, as per Godel. For any formal system capable of representing basic arithmetic, we can prove the the Godel sentence "This sentence is unprovable" from within that formal system. So whenever I hear people try to connect it to reality or the human mind or whatever, I immediately frown. It's a metamathematical result, that's really it.

The law of identity (A=A) is a logical necessity.

Imagine A is not A. We would then have the logical contradiction A & ~A, violating the law of non-contradiction.

"Logical necessity" is not some extra-systematic modality applying to everything, it's determined by the set of logical truths of a given logic. Dropping the Law of Identity does not entail that "A is not A". We already have a perfectly well-understood logic without identity. Helpfully, it is known as "first-order predicate logic without identity". Identity is simply not part of that formulation of classical logic, so it's not a logical truth there.

Dropping a logical law is not the same as assuming the negation of that law, that's silly. Logics without predicates are not making the assumption that predication is incoherent or something. Another way to accomplish this is to modify the Law of Identity by defining it to only apply to some class of objects and not others. Newton da Costa and others have done work on these non-reflexive logics. But yet again, no contradiction appears in these formalisms, they're consistent systems where identity is not generalizable to all objects because the intention of such systems is to give a logical representation of ontologically indistinguishable yet non-identical objects (for use in QM). See the SEP on this.

My point the idea of sex you are using claims bodies are more than bodies. If I take a body, let's say one with XX chromosomes, a womb, breasts, a vagina, etc., your position proclaims it must belong to the sex category/sex identity of "female." It is subsuming our linguistical/conceptual/social practice of "female sex" into the body itself. You say such a body must be "female" when such a categorisation is not actually given in the existence of body.

You are playing with words in a way that is unhelpful. I am not claiming bodies are more than bodies. Referring to a body with such characteristics as "female" is a matter of definition, not of needless addition. This would be akin to complaining about calling an SUV and SUV when it's simply a vehicle. Well obviously some vehicles meet the criterion that make them SUVs, just as certain bodies have the properties which instantiate "female".

So this is something I'm not well read in and it puzzles me. You say this:

Bodies are what they are no matter the category they are sorted. They are defined independently of any sex or gender categorisation.
[...]
It doesn't recognise sex isn't the body at all.

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here. Even if I think sex is immutable I'm obviously not denying "bodies are what they are", nor am I saying that "sex is the body".

Rather, I'm taking the view that there is an type of object called "body". This type of object, when instantiated in the world (e.g. myself), has among its properties "sex" which I will assume does not change since it's based on concrete properties that do not vary with time nor interpretation (e.g. the genetic capacity to bear children, so infertility isn't relevant). This has no similarity to your objections to those saying sex is immutable and non-constructed. Sex is, let's suppose, a property that human bodies have. No one is saying bodies are identical to the sex they bear as a property.

Am I misunderstanding you?

I didn't want to become part of their performance of what they imagined themselves to be. Other people can do that if they want.

How could you even conceivably be part of the "performance"? You, as an individual with little to no power to affect large social change, would at most be asked to use a preferred pronoun and slightly reword the occasional sentence to reflect that. In 99% of cases this will be to use him/her/them. People often bitch and moan about "But I saw xer, xem, or some other ridiculous thing on Tumblr (the horror!)." And to them I say oh good for you, you found someone using a stupid term that will be here and gone in a month before they opt to using something gender neutral like "them". Time tends to quickly weed these out because they are not useful and are cumbersome. There's an exponentially larger cottage industry around complaining about isolated, temporary silliness than there are people doing the silly things.

58 gender options (below) from which to choose. Most of these look kind of redundant to me, but I am sure there are partisans ready to defend to their death the critical difference between being a cis male and a cis man, between gender fluid and gender juice. — Bitter Crank

Yes, many of them are redundant. You clearly recognize this, and they are not available any longer from what you said so it's much ado about nothing (the option for the native American "two spirit back is completely useless tbf). And that they have sex and gender options available makes it even sillier. "Cis male" and "cisgender male" are the same thing so this almost looks fake, but I'm assuming you copy/pasted what was actually done.

I know we're supposed to assume for the thread that your list is roughly accurate, but number 3 just looks too contentious. I know I don't always act according to the ethical rules I think are correct. Beliefs conflict with desires quite often (unwanted obsessions, failures to keep to a diet, etc.).

By which standard would we be measuring our internal ethical rules and external judgments that allow us to change our internal moral compass or decide not to?

Peer reaction (especially from family and friends) and our moral intuitions about what is bad. Both influence how our moral conscience develops.

The thing is my point still apply here if I'm wearing Jordans, it doesn't mean I'm telling people I am male! It's just a fashion preference. — Terran Imperium

Shoes are less contentious. If you were a man and wore dresses the situation would be much different.

A woman can behave with a manly attitude, that's what people call a tomboy. Do you know the difference between a tomboy and a transgender man?

I didn't talk about attitudes or personality. I brought up more tangible things: how people dress according to how their society deems appropriate for their gender (colors and style, for example), bodily features that are usually associated with a particular biological sex but aren't exclusive to it, the kind of norms (especially social) we apply to particular genders.

The tomboy comparison isn't sufficient here. I've a transwoman whose a friend of mine who's a music professor. She used to tell me how she knew she was different since she was a kid for various reasons: she preferred to play with "girl toys", she would take every opportunity to dress and act like a woman, and had visceral reactions to depictions of herself in typically male dress and such. She wasn't delusional, she had (and still has, if less so) gender dysphoria. She wasn't delusional, it's just her gender identity does not match what is expected from her sex.

Short of presupposing that she is inherently wrong for being the way she is, I don't see what the argument is here. Perhaps some people go too far in their views about sex and gender. I don't know, I don't personally have a great deal of interest in it. But the core of it seems extremely plausible unless we make arbitrary moral assumptions and completely disregard people's experience despite hat experience playing a crucial role in how they view and act with respect to the gender they have.

Well you certainly are a crank. I mean, one would think medical discrimination (access to treatments which can help individuals with dysphoria not being covered by their insurance), job discrimination for being a trans-person, various legal discrimination (such as "trans panic" defense found in many cases of violence against transpeople) and such would count as actual slights. But no, it's actually imagined and those fighting against helping people are bellyaching.

Where have I heard this song and dance from before?

Not only trans-gender people but those that thinks there is more than two genders. A non-binary gender? Really? — Terran Imperium

Sure. Not everyone's gender identity falls strictly within masculine and feminine domains. Arguments against this are supposed to be what?

This gender ideology contradicts basic biology.
Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: 'XY' and 'XX' are genetic markers of health, not genetic markers of a disorder. — Terran Imperium

Dictionaries are not good sources for evolving definitions nor technical definitions, of which our current understanding of gender and related issues falls into both camps. And you are proving this point perfectly. Being male or female does not have much to do with the issue at hand (hence the inadequacy of citing Cambridge and Oxford). Rather, the issue is on gender and gender identity.

Gender refers to secondary sexual characteristics, not primary ones like your biological sex. But since gender isn't a simple matter of chromosomes and sex organs, but a covers social roles, dress, physical attribute characterizations (e.g. looking masculine), it comes in degrees. It's not a binary because there's no clear cutoff point, it ranges from highly masculine attributes, to sort of masculine ones, to a more ambiguous territory (non-binary) and over into the feminine side. I mean, we often say young males ought to play with "boy toys" and girls with "girl toys", but those toys don't have sexual parts at all. They're just objects which model secondary sexual characteristics and represent common dress for the represented gender. Gender is not sex, this distinction is clearly made (if unconsciously) even in everyday speech.

Gender identity involves ones internal view of their gender. Like, I think of myself as a man. I intentionally adopt usual masculine dress, act "manly" (also like a dork), etc. But this is not true of everyone. Many people have a mismatch here, where their internal sense does not map onto what society says they're supposed to look and be like. Many transgender people have this dysphoria, though some non-trans people have it temporarily (some kids, I think; it goes away for many people).

To treat this as a simple issue, well, your initial post makes it clear you don't understand the basics of the topic at hand. You may have been insulted by whoever (I don't care honestly), but you are probably partly to blame if you acted as you did in your OP. Calling transgender people delusional, calling people you disagree with delusional, using dictionary definitions over the definitions used in academia. These do not endear you to anyone, it would piss me off if this was how you started your other discussion because it doesn't even meet the minimum of niceties one expects in discussions.

"What defines correct thinking?" I defined the term, saying "forms of thought that are salve veritate, not accidentally, but essentially. "Rules." were not mentionde. — Dfpolis

You are unbelievable. I, again, repeat: What makes them (let's speak plain english) "correct thinking"? You haven't answered that, you simply said they are not accidentally so, but essentially so. No argument is given, you're just saying they are. Great argument.

First, if you "create" a system without foundational reflection, there is no reason to think its principles of inference will besalve veritate.

"Foundational reflection" will necessarily presuppose other principles. In the case of logic, all you'll end up doing is presupposing what constitutes "correct thinking", if it's even defined at all or explained what makes it so. And what do you know, you've done exactly that. There's no reason to think the rules you presuppose in entering such reflection are inherently correct.

That is a good reason to begin with an examination of correct thought, as Aristotle did. It is no reason to "create" rules of inference that lack an adequate foundation in human thought or in the reality it seeks to reflect.

The problem is such an examination will require reasoning. And correct reasoning (or form of thought, correct thinking, whatever) already presupposes a set of correct logical rules you are abiding by. You don't get around this by recourse to "reality" (an already contentious concept; people consider many different things part of reality).

Your syllogism has an undistributed middle, and the conclusion, while true, is invalid.

That. Was. Literally. My. Point. You claimed the principle of explosion is valid. My response was that it's not valid *in Aristotelian logic*, and I gave an explosive argument in Aristotelian terms but which is not valid because contradictions do not imply anything in traditional logic.

You mean there was no Principle of Pseudo-Scotus before Frege?

Interesting how you missed the words "standard logic". I didn't say Frege created the principle of explosion, I said it was not what you might call logical orthodoxy until Frege made it part of Classical Logic. The works of medieval logicians cannot in any way be said to have been the standard logic, ever. By Kant's time they had been lost to history and not even remembered.

Really? If that’s what you think, you have completely misunderstood the text. Let's look at it:

When you observe a particle of a certain type, say an electron, now and here, this is to be regarded in principle as an isolated event. Even if you observe a similar particle a very short time at a spot very near to the first, and even if you have every reason to assume a causal connection between the first and the second observation, there is no true, unambiguous meaning in the assertion that it is the same particle you have observed in the two cases. (Schrodinger)

Note that the "identity" being discussed here is not that expressed by the Principle of Identity (“Whatever is, is”) -- which is unitary -- but a binary identity linking two cases. Using one as a counterexample to the other is equivocation.

"Two case" as in two cases of observation, not two cases of different objects. Schrodinger goes to pains to make clear that the object is not self-identical despite the reasonable assumption of there being a causal connection between what one observes.

It does no such thing. "Whatever is" assumes no specific structure to reality. It applies to whatever is actually the case.

Identity entails that objects are individuated. If some object (or set of objects) lacks individuation conditions, then they are not self-identical.

No, I did not say the "rule" is different. The "rule" is exactly the same. What is different is that future contingents do not exist, and so fail to meet the conditions of application for the rule -- which applies to all existential situations. This goes to the heart of what I am saying, and what you fail to see -- namely, unless you understand the foundational role of the principles of being, you cannot understand when the conditions of application for logic are met, and when they are not.

I did not say the rule was different, I said the rules were different. I went on to say that, according to Aristotle (as per your quote), Excluded Middle does not apply to future contingents. Note that which you did not address: In the case of future contingents, we can still reason about them. Aristotle does not say Non-contradiction no longer applies, nor does he say that Identity fails to apply. But that Excluded Middle no longer does. That's why the received view is that Aristotle is suggesting a different logic for such instances, one where Excluded Middle is not a tautology. The primacy of ontology just makes this clear: Future contingents require dropping Excluded Middle to reason about them, but we keep the other rules to think correctly about them. So correct thinking, even on your view, is not captured by one set of rules or a single set of ways of thinking.

I do not reject all use of truth values. I simply see that they are not well founded for every well-formed formula. In other words that truth is a prelational, not an intrinsic property.

You earlier referred to them as an "incoherent concept". Anyway, I don't really get this. It's a common view that liar-type sentences are not well-formed, not that truth-values are not well-formed.

Note that "Everything Jones says about Watergate is true." is not a statement about the reality of Watergate, but one about Jones' statements. Similarly, "Most of Nixon's assertions about Watergate are false," is not a statement about Watergate, but about Nixon's locutions. Thus, it cannot be counted among "Nixon's assertions about Watergate."

Statements that people make are real. Statements made about other statements are common, e.g. "You're lying" or "Your words are untrue". But in this case, I've no idea how you came to that conclusion. If Jones only says Nixon is mostly lying about Watergate, and Nixon says everything Jones says about Watergate is true, then the issue is these cannot be jointly true and yet they *entail* each other. If your issue is just that it's about a locution (which in turn is about Watergate) then that's easily remedied:

1) Jones: Most of what Nixon says about Watergate is false.

2) Nixon: Everything Jones says about Watergate-related issues is true.

The paradox is the same (what Jones says about Nixon watergate claims counts as "Watergate-related", surely).

I am not claiming to have an exhaustive knowledge of being. My understanding only needs to be adequate to justify the principles of being that underpin traditional logic.

You went beyond that, you said your understanding was sufficient to claim (as you did) that the principles are true essentially, rather than accidentally. My point is your experience doesn't generate anywhere near the justification for that. Experience is fine for generation provisional assumptions that go into your logic, but that's not what you've argued for. You think there is one correct way of thinking and that traditional logic corresponds to that thinking (correct me if I'm mistaken).

No, one we can say conditionally true things about. The condition is what Aristotle called "the willing suspension of disbelief." If you impose this condition on a premise, then it remains imposed on any dependent conclusion. So, if you want to say "In an imagined world with Pegasi, some horses have wings," I would have no objection. But, that conclusion does not make your case.

With the lack of conditionals in traditional logic I'm not even sure this is consistent with the logic being proposed. I mean, there's even a bit in Prior Analytics where Aristotle considers a conditional but deems it not a syllogism despite the conclusion following necessarily. But I'm not even sure how your example works. An imagined world is by definition non-existent so how are you reasoning correctly about it? After all, the principles which apply to existing things is not supposed to apply to that which has no being.

There is nothing in traditional logic that prevents anyone from stating a set of axioms and working out their implications. Knowing traditional logic only means that they will be able to bring greater insight to the task.

What I was saying was that if we take your view that truth-values are an "incoherent concept" (as you said), then modern maths/logic are not usable because they make crucial use of this and other concepts (conditionals), and dispenses with aspects of traditional logic (existential import is not assumed in quantifiers). And I don't see how traditional logic has done anything to further knowledge in these areas, it's mostly a curiosity post-Russell (Frege was mostly obscure, sadly).

So, you you think its "useful" to be able to prove that some living horses have wings? And believe that "salve veritate" thinking is not "worthwhile"? I am trying to be charitable here, but it's not easy.

No. It was an example of a type of reasoning which ought to be invalid as logic rightly concerned with forms of argument which always preserve the truth. In the traditional case, it only meets this criterion if we only talk about what we know to be true about reality, so it's application to hypothetical and mathematical cases becomes less useful.

Perhaps you have in mind some theorem or empirical finding that cannot be arrived at using traditonal logic? I surely know none.

I already pointed out examples of what I was talking about (e.g. uniform continuity vs continuity of a function).

Or lets take a "problem" from the quantification article for Wikipedia:

The problem the Wiki article mentions doesn't seem to have anything to do with the logic, but that syntactic rules are expected to be finite. Traditional logic had no theory for the quantifiers it used, the quantifiers weren't detachable, and that's in part why its application to mathematics was so limited and thus Frege had to develop a new logic. Prior, until the medieval logicians there was no real understanding of them, and even the medieval logicians treated quantifiers sort of like names. Frege made them clearer by making them a new kind of linguistic object.

Put it this way. Mathematicians did not commit themselves to instantiating every object they reason about in mathematics, even before classical logic was created. Making sense of this is a bit part in why Frege created classical logic, because the mathematicians were clearly not assuming existential import in quantifiers the way traditional logic requires.

I have already said. Let me be more precise: forms of thought that are salve veritate, not accidentally, but essentially. — Dfpolis

You're not being precise at all. You're simply saying that a certain set of rules are necessarily correct but have no reason for believing so that isn't contentious. Anyone can say that, actually showing it has been my repeated argument against you.

Not quite. It is observing that if you're reasoning, and want the truth of your premises to guarantee the truth of your conclusion, your reasoning needs to reflect the principles of being. Adhering to certain forms is one way of doing this.

This is incorrect. Logic is the enterprise of creating a system which preserves truth by not resorting to "principles of being" (which, again, you do not have some inherent claim to the correct principles of being without argument) but to principles of inference.

Let us also agree that mere fact that two areas (correct thought vs the transformation of symbolic forms) differ is not a reason for the study of one to be more in vogue than that of another.

This doesn't make any sense. The reason the symbolic side is more in vogue is precisely because the normative role of logic requires first having your inference rules and axioms laid out first. It's exactly akin to having your moral principles laid out before declaring to know the moral status of every act.

From a contradiction, anything does, in fact, follow. And yes, we are told conflicting things. ( I would not call both conflicting statements "information" because they cannot both reduce what is logically possible.) Does the mere existence of conflicting claims warrant treating contradictory statements as equally true? Hardly.

If you accept the Principle of Explosion then you do not accept syllogistic logic. In Syllogistic, one cannot derive any arbitrary conclusion from inconsistent premises, e.g.

Some As are Bs
No Bs are As
Therefore, All As are As

What warrants accepting contradictory claims is that you might well have good reason to believe both and possess no (current) means of picking one over the other. This happens in everyday life (conflicting statements from trustworthy friends) to even science and mathematics (the early calculus was known to be inconsistent, but people just rolled with it for a couple centuries until limits were hammered down). Explosion didn't become standard in logic until Frege created classical logic. That's why Syllogistic is often regarded as a paraconsistent logic.

So, to form our concepts of <being> and <existence>, all we need to do is remove any notes of intelligibility that specify the particularity of the being we are encountering.

This is exactly the same problem you make in multiple different ways. People
Do not form always the same concepts of being and existence.

Let's be clear. The syllogism only reflects a valid thought process in words. Aristotelian logic is not about verbal forms. It is about the ways of thinking expressed in those forms.

Aristotelian logic does not map to the "ways of thinking". In fact, probably no logic does to any degree of usefulness (otherwise developing AI would be much easier).

That is precisely the point. Your example has nothing to do with the Principle of Identity we are discussing. To continue to pretend that it does, after I have shown you its utter irrelevance is arguing in bad faith.

Yes it does. The particles in question are, quite possibly, not identical to themselves (it's a question of science and not one solved by recourse to abstraction from everyday experiences). To pretend that's not the argument I was making is a lie. Or you just refuse to read the Schrodinger quote again. That's a neat move.

My response was that granting the facts you put into evidence does nothing to show that "Whatever is, is" is false. Please do not distort my position. If it is the case that electrons are not indiviualizable, then it is the case that electrons are not indiviualizable. (BTW, I have no reason to doubt this.)

It does show that. If "Whatever is, is" holds for quantum objects as well (take Schrodinger's case of electrons) then they necessarily must be ontologically individuated. If they cannot be individuated, they are not self-identical. This does not mean you cannot say true things about such objects, simply that you cannot say they are identical to themselves.

Nor is it useful to pretend that the Principle of Identity is something else. I am not following you down a Trumpian rabbit hole, so I am skipping the rest of your comments on identity.

This is silly and borderline ridiculous. Can people defensibly have different accounts of an idea which goes by the same name? Obviously so, just look at *any* disagreement in terminology. Intuitionists believe classical logicians incorrectly define Excluded Middle for instance.

This is the case with regard to that which is not always existent or not always nonexistent. One of the two propositions in such instances must be true and the other false, but we cannot say determinately that this or that is false, but must leave the alternative undecided. One may indeed be more likely to be true than the other, but it cannot be either actually true or actually false. It is therefore plain that it is not necessary that of an affirmation and a denial one should be true and the other false. For in the case of that which exists potentially, but not actually, the rule which applies to that which exists actually does not hold good.
— Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 9

The reason Aristotle give is exactly that I gave, i.e. that because the case is not actual (does not exist) neither proposition can "be either actually true or actually false."

I'm honestly trying not to laugh because your point doesn't make any sense. I said Aristotle gave this argument as a metaphysical example of where the Law of the Excluded Middle does not apply. Your response is to say that the rules are different there. Well, yea, that's what I was saying. Aristotle does not believe that particular rule applies to potential events in the future. But Aristotle does not assert time negates the application other principles (e.g. Non-contradiction) but that one specifically. So it's not posited as a domain where logic does not apply.

You can redefine "exists" if you wish, but doing so will not change what I mean by the term.

Ah the good ol' "My definition is inherently the default one". As a matter of fact, I don't believe I redefined "exists" at all, as the ontological status of the future isn't obvious (whatever you may insist, philosophy doesn't tend to settle such matters).

I do not base the math I use on symbolic logic, as no mathematical system reducible to arithmetic can be shown to be self-consistent. I justify my mathematics by abstracting its foundations from reality -- thus guarantying its self-consistency.

I didn't suggest you were a Logicist. My point was simply stated and obvious: if you cannot accept truth-values then you cannot even use modern mathematics. Mathematicians do resort to such formalisms when necessary, and they use these concepts.

Still, I wonder why you are not commenting on my simple resolution of the "insoluble" paradoxes, or jumping in with an actual defense against my charge that "truth value" is an incoherent concept. "Cute" is not a counterargument.

I believe I said "cute" in reply to you saying "I'm sorry you are committed to so many errors", which was equally as much a non-argument. Rudeness begets rudeness my friend, and you have a habit of using it and pretending it didn't happen.

That aside, the notion of truth-value isn't what causes the Liar paradox, it's having a semantically closed language and a language which uses Tarski's T-scheme. You can construct contingent Liar paradoxes by pure reference to real world things (Kripke gives examples in "An Outline of a Theory of Truth", which you can find online (it's on the first few pages)). So even by the criterion you gave it doesn't do anything about the paradoxes.

So, you want me to seriously consider that I may never have encountered existence? I'm not following you down that rabbit hole either.

No, I'm saying that "reflecting" upon it does not by virtue of magic entail you have developed an adequate understanding of it. It's not a rabbit hole, it's just not how you do philosophy unless it's with sycophants.

Still, unless we are discussing ideas or concepts, they do not just point to ideas or concepts. The definition of "Pegasus" is not the definition of an idea, but of a mythical beast.

Yea, one which we can say true things about. If your definition of truth is just what we can point at and think about correctly then a lot of normal things people says is either nonsense (because we think we're speaking truthfully of non-existent things) or your definition fails so fundamental adequacies (e.g. "All winged horses are horses" should come out as true). I mean, imagine if zebras vanished tomorrow and we then said "Sorry mate, it's no longer true that zebras are black and white because, obviously, there are no zebras anymore!"

I did not say the sentence of the Liar paradox had existential import. I said that that the concepts of <truth> and <falsity> did not apply to the sentence because it made no reference to reality.

I've already addressed this point when I brought up contingent, empirical examples of the Liar paradox forming in natural language exchanges (just read the Kripke paper I referenced otherwise this is pointless).

Stepping back, you're so dogmatic in your commitments that you will not even discuss the merits of my solution.

No, I ignored the "merits" because the "cost" includes rejecting modern logic and mathematics which make crucial use of the concepts you're dispensing with, not to mention rendering innumerable natural language expressions as mistaken.

You were trying to show the outright stupidity of Aristotelian logic, but you could only do so by violating its canons, specifically by ignoring the requirement that Universal affirmative propositions have existential import.

Not the stupidity, the lack of usability. If it cannot even work for expressions such as that then its use of existential import (and the ill-defined notion of "correct thinking") just aren't worthwhile to keep.

Again, you are closed to my fundamental point. Traditional logic is not about sentential or any other form of symbolic manipulation, It is about correct thinking

Yes I've addressed this. In doing so it leaves itself unable to do basic reasoning and so as a theory of "correct thinking" it leaves much to be desired. Classical logic, whatever issues I may take with it in certain domains, does not have this issue (and, at the first-order level) is not susceptible to the self-reference paradoxes.

Thank you for your faith claim.

Oh stuff it. Without a theory of quantifiers (which we get in classical logic) one cannot, for instance, distinguish between the condition for the continuity of a function and the condition for uniform continuity. The difference is the placement of just two nested quantifiers and Syllogistic has no way to even formalize this. Once Frege had done his work we found out theat hitherto mysterious difference. And that's just one example, doubtlessly historians of logic know others.

There is no problem with my definition. I am not denying that "logic" can have many meanings. I'm specifying the meaning I'm using. — Dfpolis

And I provided an issue that falls out of using that definition.

Mostly, they study systems of symbolic representation and manipulation. So, while they may be correct ways of thinking about various formal systems, they do not study the structure of correct thought, as does classical logic. — Dfpolis

You are avoiding the issue though. What defines correct thinking? That is determined by articulating some formal set of rules, i.e. a logic, and arguing that such a system ought to be reasoned in accordance with. And really, there's a reason your conception of logic has fallen out of use amongst logicians. That being that there's a difference between logic (a set of symbols and rules regarding their transformation) and the normative roles we give to a certain set of those rules (the correct rules for reasoning, or if you prefer, thinking). The modern development of logic does not treat that latter definition as the base of logic. I mean as a first observation, people do not think in accordance to the rules Aristotle believed were correct. In fact, humans seem to (reasonably) assume that correct thinking is rather domain-dependent. Classical logic says from a contradiction everything follows and yet it would be impossible to actually reason that way in everyday life (just recall how often you come across conflicting information).

Second, I am not "assuming the Principle of Excluded Middle." I am finding that, when I reflect on the understanding of existence I have abstracted from my experience of reality, I see that some conjectured state must either be or not be. This is not an "assumption," but a finding.

A finding which even your own apparent source (Aristotle) disagrees with. And again, reflecting on your own experience does not entail finding a necessity because your experience does not encompass the whole of how reality can be. (this will come up later, so I'm saving it).

I note that you did not comment on the syllogism I offered in evidence. Is your claim, then, that to apply a principle to a concrete case we do not need to recognize that the concrete case meets the conditions of application? Or perhaps that we can validly apply principles that are not thought of as universal? Or perhaps you want to claim that if the conditions of application can be stated in words that can describe, in another sense, the case at hand, we can still rationally apply the principle to that case?

Ok, you somehow missed the part of that response where I explicitly responded. I'll summarize: The syllogism you made was followed by you claiming that the justification is Aristotelian. My response was that your argument is valid in basically every logic. Ergo it wasn't resorting to Aristotelian assumptions.

You see not to understand the Principle of Identity. it does not make contingent claims about reality, saying, for example that electrons are individually identifiable or even that they are individuals. What is says is: "Whatever is, is." So if it is the case that electrons are not individuated, then that is the case.

Now, do you have an actual example of a violation of the Principle of Identity?

Ok, this is not an argument on your part. I gave you an example of a (potential) empirical violation of the Law of Identity. Your response was simply to claim that Identity is necessarily true (in the world) therefore my example is off the table because it posits the Law of Identity is only contingently true (only holding for some objects). Again, you are either question begging about Identity being true or else your assuming identity can only be conceived of one way with no debate (which is probably just question begging since, again, people can disagree on the correct account of something). So for instance, we could define Identity such that it applies to some class "M", indirectly limiting what it applies to and yet retaining the principle where it seems to apply.

If objects are not ontologically individuated, they are not self-identical. To be self-identical is to be (though not the best phrasing) the same as oneself and different than every other thing (to be individuated, essentially). That's what is referred to when Schrodinger was talking about in "Science and Humanism", such objects may if fact lack any ontological individuation and thus have no identity:

"When you observe a particle of a certain type, say an electron, now and here, this is to be regarded in principle as an isolated event. Even if you observe a similar particle a very short time at a spot very near to the first, and even if you have every reason to assume a causal connection between the first and the second observation, there is no true, unambiguous meaning in the assertion that it is the same particle you have observed in the two cases. The circumstances may be such that they render it highly convenient and desirable to express oneself so, but it is only an abbreviation of speech; for there are other cases where the 'sameness' becomes entirely meaningless; and there is no sharp boundary, no clear-cut distinction between them, there is a gradual transition over intermediate cases. And I beg to emphasize this and I beg you to believe it: It is not a question of being able to ascertain the identity in some instances and not being able to do so in others. It is beyond doubt that the question of 'sameness', of identity, really and truly has no meaning."

Now I don't care if you accept this as actually being the case (I doubt I would even accept it), but we know that it is at least possible for this to be the case.

I am sorry, but this does not contradict my position, but a confirms it. The reason the linguistic expression of the Principle of Excluded Middle does not apply to future contingents is that they do not exist. Since they have no being, there is no justification for applying a principle founded in our understanding of existence.

This might contradict Relativity so I don't see how you aren't just picking and choosing what to accept based on principles that only hold in limited experiences and generalizing them to everything needlessly. It's not obvious that the future doesn't exist, or at least, you've no experience on which to say anything about it.

Again, my position offers a simple solution to the Liar paradox, Jourdain's paradox and other conundrums based on the notion of "truth value." It simply shows that "truth value" is an ill-defined construct.

At this point you cannot even use modern logical systems, nor even modern mathematics based on those systems. Most of pure maths don't even have referents in the world by which they could be made "really true" or whatever.

I am sorry to see you committed to so many errors.

Says the guy who cannot even accept truth values (and therefore none of modern maths and logic). Cute.

That does not mean that those principles cannot be justified. it only means that they they cannot be deduced. They can, for example, be justified by an appeal to experience. My claim, which you refuse to address, is that the principles of being are abstracted, a posteriori, from our understanding of existence.

That's not what you did. When I brought up a possible empirical violation of Identity,you simply claimed that because Identity is not contingent, but rather necessary, the example must be incorrect. Just saying "Such and such are my first principles because they're abstracted from my experience" does not entail they are necessary truths, or indubitable, or whatever. As it happens, your experiences (even ones you may think must be true) can be incorrect or else not justified to the extent that you treat them as applying to everything.

Note that while my claim addresses what can be known from our experience of reality, your reply fails to address what we can know from experience. it is, therefore, nonresponsive.

Your claim makes an assumption that from your experience you have found some necessary portion of reality, but note you've given no argument that it is actually necessary or how you know it to be so other than by saying "Upon reflection".

Of course we can't define things into existence. Rather, definitions point to the aspects of reality we're discussing.

That's not what I said. Pegasi do not exist. That does not mean I cannot define a meaning for "Pegasi". In fact, given you understand what "pegasi" means you can't really dispute that. Definitions do not always point to actual things, sometimes they just point to ideas or concepts.

What you refuse to grasp is that classical logic is not concerned with linguistic forms, but with correct patterns of thought. Aristotle spent a great deal of time pointing out fallacies -- many of which (such as the equivocation in your example) use apparently correct linguistic forms to mask manifestly incorrect thinking.

Classical logic is the logic Frege created in the 1870s, Aristotle used Aristotelian logic. And what you refuse to accept is that the argument I gave is valid in Aristotelian logic.

That is why they cannot resolve paradoxes such as the Liar and Jourdain's

Oddly enough, despite no standard solution existing there are many potential solutions to such paradoxes (reworking the T-scheme, using a different truth-bearer besides sentences, etc.). And the Liar-type paradoxes have nothing to do with existential import, because the arguments don't have any quantifiers in them so your response here makes no sense.

I spotted it instantly. Are you claiming that "horse" is univocally predicated in "some horses have wings" and "winged horses have wings"?

You seem to have mixed up the point. That being that "All winged horses are horses" is obviously true unless you make the (now discarded) Aristotelian assumption about existential import. Otherwise we have this infinite class of perfectly analyzable statements (in ordinary language) and yet we cannot reason about them meaningfully. And a logic like that is so weak as to be inadequate in modern mathematics. That's why Frege had to invent the theory of quantifiers in the first place, traditional logic wasn't up to the job of parsing out how mathematicians were reasoning.

I don't understand what you're saying. Whatever one thinks about logic, we're going to use it where and when it's useful. We use it to derive truths from other truths.

No. The use of something is not the thing itself. A tool is not the same as what you use the tool for, to give an example.

Not if you're talking about "the world" when you say "reality". If you're an anti-realist about abstract objects then you'll probably think logic in a pragmatic or instrumentalist way. So then logical systems are useful in various aspects of reality but it's not about or part of reality.

That is why I defined what I meant by logic: the science of correct thinking (about reality). That is what I am offering to justify. — Dfpolis

That's the problem though. Presumably there is only one reality, but we know there are many logics so there seems to be an inherent problem with your definition. Namely, the contradiction with having multiple correct ways of thinking about reality based on different, inconsistent logics.

Yet, if, in criticizing the proof of a theorem in Constructive Mathematics I were to say that in addition to an axiom you used applying or not applying there was some other possibility you had not considered, surely you would object.
So, while you may construct a system which makes no internal use of the principle of excluded middle, in reasoning about that system, you would use the principle. — Dfpolis

This is exactly what I was talking about when I brought up the metatheory/semantics point. You are simply assuming the Principle of Excluded Middle in your metalanguage and then pointing out how it then appears in the object language. No, using Intuintionistic Logic does not mean accepting reasoning about constructive proofs with Excluded Middle. As I said, this and other Non-classical logics have their own metatheories that make do not accept Excluded Middle. Excluded Middle is not false in constructive mathematics, it simply cannot be placed within the scope of the universal quantifier in proofs (so it's application in infinite domains is invalid). You are simply question begging the principle at hand.

So, when we apply mathematical or cybernetic algorithms, the reasoning justifying their application is quite Aristotelian.

I sincerely hope I don't sound rude, but are you kidding me? You do realize that a simple conditional is valid in damn near any logical system, right? I could just as easily say scientific reasoning is Intuintionistic by your lights.

I've said while we can think of impossible states, there can't be impossible states. You have not provided a single example of a real state violating the ontological principles of identity, contradiction or excluded middle. — Dfpolis

Bro, I didn't give everything at once to avoid a massive post. Aside from the fact that logic isn't about reality, take:

Identity violations: Check Newton da Costa's work (based on work by early pioneers in quantum mechanics) about indistinguishable quantum objects. That is, objects that are such that they are *ontologically* indistinguishable (it's not an epistemic limitation), non-individuated objects. Schrodinger himself explicitly endorsed this, hence the old phrase that quantum objects had "lost their identity".

Excluded Middle: nothing here, not my wheelhouse. However, ironically Aristotle disagrees with you. He believes there are metaphysical violations of Excluded Middle: contingent statements about the future (his sea battle argument).

Non-contradiction: The Liar paradox. No, it does not have an obvious or simple solution. Professional logicians have no standard resolution. That aside, the LP (if a sound argument) violates non-contradiction. And if one is, as I am, a Platonist about mathematical and other abstract objects like propositions, one is (as I am) committed the accepting the existence of inconsistent objects from what seems to be an argument from commonly accepting rules for reasoning.

No, it is not question begging. It is an experiential claim to which you have provided no counter example or rebutting argument — Dfpolis

It's question begging. You made the argument that in even assessing e.g. Constructive Mathematics one has to use Excluded Middle because you think it results in an situation where you're... violating Excluded Middle.

No. Definitions of terms point to aspects of reality that can be experienced and analyzed. So, the question is not about the self-consistency of semantic relations, but about the adequacy of my account to our experience of reality. — Dfpolis

I'm not sure you understood my point. You said this:

"Thus, these principles are not a priori, not forms of reason, but a posteriori understandings that are so fundamental that once we come to grasp them, we understand that they apply to all being."

All this really says is that "once you assume my definitions of the relevant terms and their scope of application is global in all possible domains, you'll see they apply to all of reality" (It's essentially defining your way to victory). The only difference is you're (intentionally or not) cloaking it under language of discovery as opposed to assumption. As it happens, people can and have put forth reasonable objections to your views about these "a posteriori understandings". On a related note, we have definitions for things which do not exist in reality so I don't really know why you're insisting on thinking about definitions in that way.

As I said, logic is not about the consistency of language, but about salve veritate thinking. To save truth, you must start with truth. "All winged horses are horses" is not a truth, but an equivocation. "Winged horses" are not "horses" in the sense living equine creatures, which is the sense of "horses" required by the conclusion. In the same way, there is no true statement in which "the present king of England" is taken as having a substantive reference. — Dfpolis

No. The argument I gave there is *valid* in Aristotelian Logic, having the form: All A's are B's, All A's are C, Therefore some B's are C. It's not an issue of language, you have simply run into one of the issues with Aristotelian logic: it has syllogisms it deems valid but which can take one from true premises ('All winged horses are horses') to false conclusions ('Some horses have wings'). Take up existential import with Aristotle, modern logics don't have this issue.

It speaks poorly of those who educated you in logic that you are unable to spot so obvious an equivocation. Correct thinking is not about matching letter sequences or manipulating word strings. It is about using conceptual representations rationally.

Lame insult aside, its clearly not an obvious equivocation given Aristotle created this issue.

If logic is not about reality... Then it is? Imagination? — Blue Lux

Logic is about graphing out a particular consequence relation by accepting some set of axioms and inference rules. You can understand this as the relation between particular abstract objects (model theory) or as sequences of proofs (proof theory). There are other conceptions of logic, but most of those (such as the "rules for correct reasoning") make use of these in a normative setting or else they have fallen by the wayside (most professionals don't place primacy on logic regarding thinking anymore).

Logic is a statement of fact/in relation to fact. If there is any error, it cannot be logic/logical. — BrianW

Logic has nothing to do with facts and there relation. Facts refer to ways the world is. Logic specifically deals with (primarily) the logical consequence relationship, nothing to do with the empirical world. (At best one might bring up abstract objects)

We might be a little more explicit and say it is the science of correct thinking about reality -- because we want it to be salve veritate -- if our premises reflect reality, then we want "correct thinking" to be such that our conclusions will necessarily reflect reality. — Dfpolis

This seems incorrect. Logic has many uses which either have nothing to do with reality or else is used in a way we might not reason about reality. So just take this website. Now I'm assuming it uses SQL as its database language. If so, then this website operates according to a Non-classical logic. But many propose we ought to reason about reality using classical logic. In which case, we have an example of using at least two logics in different domains, irrespective of reality itself. This is ignoring much of mathematics as well, such as the very useful Constructive Mathematics (based on intuintionistic logic) which rejects the Law of the Excluded Middle.

that it is impossible to both be and not be at one and the same time in one and the same way (the principle of contradiction) and that a putative reality either is, or is not (the Principle of Excluded Middle). Thus, these principles are not a priori, not forms of reason, but a posteriori understandings that are so fundamental that once we come to grasp them, we understand that they apply to all being. — Dfpolis

Identity violations: See non-reflexive logics and quasi-set theory.

Excluded Middle violations: see Intuintionistic logic.

Non-contradiction violations: see Dialetheism.

Whether you accept these or not, statements like "so fundamental that once we come to grasp them, we understand that they apply to all being" are just question begging. Sure, if I accept all your definitions for "truth", your preferred inference rules, your semantics/metatheory, then yes they follow. But that simply makes the nature of the disagreements have an obvious location of disagreement (e.g. in the semantics and such).

Working through the valid forms of syllogism with this understanding, we can see how the role of identity in propositions, together with the principles of being, justifies them — Dfpolis

It's weird that you would bring up syllogisms when we know that Syllogistic Logic has the wrong set of valid arguments for a whole slew of things. Like this is invalid in Classical Logic (Frege's logic) but was regarded in Syllogistic as valid:

All winged horses are horses.
All winged horses have wings.
Ergo some horses have wings.

The point being that people can believe you hold the incorrect view about the principles of existence just as much as they can believe (sometimes correctly) that you hold the incorrect logic.

That's tricky though, right? Because the sort of abstraction and structure building we associate with mathematics seems to be what we use to formalize existing informal practices. There's some chicken and egg trouble here.

Well, I don't think it's quite a chicken-egg problem, not just yet. Let's take a look at the most well understood historical development in the shift in logic: the creation of Classical Logic. So Aristotle's logic (if we ignore the awesome developments of medieval logicians, which had been lost to time) was the dominant logic for awhile. But it had been known for awhile that the logic wasn't sufficient to formalize the kinds of reasoning that mathematicians were using, and some things that looked similar couldn't be differentiated using the logic (like the difference between the condition for the continuity of a function and the condition for uniform continuity). So these (and other considerations) guided what Frege believed his logic ought to churn out as valid arguments.

Well, that is sort of a chicken and egg problem. It's sort of like we have an informal practice. Professionals doing it assume there is a correct way to do what they're doing, and over time they drill down on that and it eventually gets formalized with the intent to make a "coherent" story that respects what we already thought should come out as true. The development of ZF set theory is much the same. It wasn't the result of a detached attempt to reason to the correct set theory, it was created to avoid Russell's Paradox and just let us get on with math without really worrying if the axioms were capital "T" true and settled for consistency.

But there are further puzzles. It's also quite natural to think that formalization is possible in the first place because the underlying structure was there and operative all along. Formalization would then be not an invention we superimpose on a practice but the discovery of the true structure, the essence of what we were doing, in our imperfect way, the whole time. That puzzle becomes particularly acute in the cases of mathematics and logic.

Maybe? It's a platonism vs nominalism debate. But I think we can sidestep that and think of it this way. As we see in the Frege example (and the 19th century mathematical enterprise in general), formalization doesn't disregard what we already thought was true. We want certain things to come out true, though we might give up some things if we can get most of what we wanted. But this process might just show that the structures we were using were using the assumptions that matched a possible formalism, which was later developed in part to validate those assumptions. So if historically Intuitionistic Logic and Constructive Mathematics had been what became the dominant formalism, we'd see emphasis placed on the practice which corresponded to (or was compatible with) those assumptions.

My issue is whatever is meant by "true structure" it can't mean "only structure" as we know many kinds are possible. Each has a set of things which can be proven from that structure, whether a particular formalism matches it doesn't seem to indicate much more than which is useful in certain domains (that's my view anyway).

I didn't deny it was part of how we come to beliefs, I said they should not cloud how we come to them. They shouldn't have undue influence when compared to other factors such as warrant, reason and the like.

I feel like you're mixing a lot of things together. The object of thought is the thing being thought of. Like when I think of a rock the "target" of my thought is the rock. Generally when people speak of being objective they don't mean being an object. They're talking about not being overly biased, letting one's own biases and experience cloud how what they believe and how they arrive at their beliefs.

The mind can be used to study the mind just like a logical argument can be used to justify logic. This circularity is benign. — TheMadFool

That's not the case though. At best we can justify deductive logic in an indirect, non-deductive manner. Further, logical systems have metalogics, but those don't so much justify the object logic as much as they give the semantics of the logic in question.

So, there's nothing wrong with using a sound argument to justify logic. This isn't a vicious circularity as long as we come up with a sound argument free of fallacies. — TheMadFool

That's perfectly... circular. A fallacy is relative to the assumed rules of a logic in question, it is not some free-floating error that stands outside a logic. What makes an argument valid or fallacious is determined by the inference rules of the logic. In Classical Logic we get from Frege, this argument is invalid (fallacious) because it commits the existential fallacy, but in aristotelian logic is was valid:

All winged horses are horses.
All winged horses have wings.
Therefore some horses have wings.

The problem being that, of course, there are in fact no horses with wings. But prediction can't really be the end all justification because many valid arguments are either impossible to verify predictively or have no physical thing which to reference. The argument from explosion is a valid argument in most logics, but prediction would completely fail as a means of justifying it.

So, my final argument looks like this:
Argument A:
1. If ALL the predictions of logic are true then logic is justified
2. ALL the predictions of logic are true
So,
3. Logic is justified

Argument A is NOT circular and is a valid application of modus ponens. — TheMadFool

And how do we know modus ponens is valid without already assuming it to be so? That argument doesn't justify logic, it's just assuming a rule to be ok and applying it. Not that I object to modus ponens (any reasonable logic ought to respect it) but I wouldn't use it as a means to justify the enterprise of deductive logic by means of a deductive argument. That is circular, viciously so.

But I didn't make a negative modal claim, so possible worlds are irrelevant. If "It is true that Clinton did not win the election" is true in virtue of some fact in the actual world, it seems really strange on the face of it.

Yes, but as I said it is also true that Clinton did not won the election if something is present (namely a presence of Clinton losing).

I don't see how that's different than what I said. It sounds like if one said the winner of a chess game lost because they failed to lose. If the presence of the fact that the cat is on the mat is what makes "the cat is on the mat" true, then why does the absence of a fact make a negative claim true? The role of facts (and their ontology) seems a little odd. I mean on one hand it seems intuitively fine (even to me, who probably accepts correspondence truth), but I still struggle thinking through it.

I can't see the problem; the "state of how things really are" is that she lost the election.

It is true that "The cat is on the mat" if it's a fact the cat is on the mat.

It is true that "Clinton did not win the election" if something is absent (namely, an absence of Clinton winning).

To accept correspondence as explaining the truths in these cases, one may have to endorse things like negative properties. Perhaps positive facts can explain the truths of negative facts, but it's a historically difficult project for those who believe in correspondence and truth makers. But regardless, it seems an oddity when compared to corresponding to things which are actually there.

Also what said.

Do the Buddhists explain why to show the limits of logic, one needs to use logic?
What would be the fault of trying to show the limits of logic without using logic?

I don't see the issue. If you can demonstrate logic only lets you determine such and such, and not some other things, it seems I've used logic to show its limits.

Depending on the school of Buddhism, reality as it is in itself is taken to be beyond the reach of logic, because reality is what you have once you've stripped away all conceptual structure (it's ineffable). Of course, if this Buddhist also accepts the tetralemma their logic is already beyond the scope of classical western logic (Frege's logic) since the tetralemma does not assume Non-contradiction and Excluded Middle, and sometimes the Buddha can be read as saying even that is too restrictive.

Sure. Negative truths are often taken to be a very bad ontological commitment. Take this:

It is true that Clinton did not win the election.

Is that made true by the fact that she didn't win the election or by the non-obtaining state of affairs that she did win it in? It's strange, because the latter sounds like a commitment to Meinongianism (which is interesting) since it's reifying a non-existent thing to make something a fact. The former seems plain unacceptable to the correspondence theorist because facts are about how the world is (states of how things really are) not how it isn't. Facts relation to disjunction and modality may also be quite strange (more so for the former).

Should irrefutable beliefs be valued according to their truth or their utility?
Here, the condition of irrefutable is necessary since otherwise one would clearly value the beliefs according to their truth considering they can be proven to be true or false.

I don't know what these terms mean. Does ignoring the word belief, does "irrefutable" refer to necessary truths? If so, well, so of them ought to be valued, but not fetishized. Every logical or mathematical system has necessary truths. But most necessary truths are trivial or at least uninteresting in most discourses. But for most truths, they are not irrefutable in any sense whatsoever. This is enormously more so for beliefs. Any belief can believe mistaken, none are irrefutable in principle.

But some condition does have to be met, otherwise the statement is false or not truth-apt. So in the case of the cat on the mat, there has to be some cat on some mat that's being talked about. Same for snow being white and it's raining outside.

I've given the (or at least one) condition that has to be met: the conditions which lend warrant to assertion, or belief, or knowledge. Correspondence can be one such condition. But as a type of inflationary theory, correspondence theory requires more than just accepting the T-scheme to define truth.

One thing to note about those is there seems to be a general condition that's being met for the empirical domain, which is that the condition is something being a certain way in the world. That's where the common correspondence intuition comes from.

The intuition is fine, but the theory given to try and put it on firm ground has a lot of issues as mentioned above. Facthood in particular is a real problem for the correspondence theorist. Are there negative facts? Facts relating to conditionals and implications? These must, by their lights, be made true by something in the world but they're clearly not the sort of things that have a correspondence in the world, which conflicts with the reification of facts or states of affairs in this that theory.

Well, your deflate the truth predicate. If to say 'x is true' is just to say that 'x' (and x being true is just that x), then deflationists are going to say that your definition of truth need only be implicit. Whatever justifies or lends warrant to accepting "the cat is on the mat" gives exactly the same warrant for accepting "It's true that the cat is on the mat".


It's why the theory is sometimes taken to treat truth as "redundant" (in a certain sense) or as a "no-truth" theory. Deflationists are, often, fine with the correspondence intuition (whenever p obtains, the proposition that p is true), but not the correspondence theory because it requires too many implausible ontological commitments, and end up creating what is essentially a more complex version of deflationism. They need to reify facts, states of affairs and fundamentally need an explanation for this "reflecting the world" relation (even when defined as an isomorphism it's unclear how it's supposed to work).

What is a deflationist trying to accomplish or say? — Marchesk

That truth doesn't involve all these other metaphysical commitments and ought not be involved in explanations of meaning because it serves no explanatory function.

X is true iff x is true.

Is that all we've been arguing about? Because that tells me nothing that I didn't already know. Of course a statement is true if and only if it's true — Marchesk

That formulation isn't the T-scheme and it explains nothing. What I'm saying is this. The T-scheme has nothing to do with the Correspondence Theory of truth, not by necessity anyway.

Okay, so it then has nothing to do with the question of what truth is? — Marchesk

I wouldn't say nothing. Not only does it tell us how to use the predicate, according to Tarski any viable theory of truth must satisfy this convention where all the true sentences have a logically equivalent sentence (one with the same truth-value) with the "is true" predicate.

It's intended to be a necessary feature of a good truth theory, basically. That's why it's unclear if you ought to characterize Tarski's theory of truth as deflationary or correspondence, because the T-scheme works for both.

To avoid that, deflation is proposing an identity between making a statement and that statement being true. — Marchesk

I don't think that's quite right. It's not an identity, it's an equivalence. The T-scheme is a biconditional, so the deflationist (if, as usual, they accept that schema) they are simply accepting that when snow is white, the rules governing the truth predicate allows me to say it's true that snow is white. Similarly, if snow were not white (i.e. "snow is white" is false) then the linguistic conventions governing the falsity predicate allows me to use it there. (Thinking prosentential deflationism, performative deflationism)

Under Correspondence theory, it's the correspondence relation that maps the proposition onto the fact, making the proposition true. But that's not the T-scheme because

<p> is true iff p (T(p) <=>p)

Isn't saying 'p' makes 'p is true' the case. It just means they have the same truth value. Neither is "deeper" than the other, they're equivalent. It's the same as (P->Q) ^ (Q->P), they yield each other in all models.

Whatever truth means, it is not given to us by the T-scheme because, if you read it, the T-scheme uses truth in its biconditional. It just tells me how I can use the predicate.

Can one know what it is like to be a man? Or what it is like to be a woman? How, if one can have no more than one's own experiences? — Banno

Well, as a man don't my experiences include that of being a man? It's something I am, it affects various things in my life in various ways that I am cognizant of or even ways I don't know of or at least don't bother acnowledging. Vague, but it doesn't seem especially difficult to warrant giving a bunch examples unless asked.

So if one is a male, but feels like a woman, I suppose that would include experiences one might include under being a woman (however this is to be; gender of roles, particular secondary sexual characteristics that are atypical for males, what have you).

Alright, but that's false, because snow is not always white, just like the cat is not always on the mat. You need something else to make the two equivalent. — Marchesk

Ok, I think I'm about to agree with Banno that you either don't understand the logic or there's some communication issue. Because it doesn't matter. Pick whatever well-formed, true sentence you want (ignoring Liar sentences). Append the predicate "is true". Those will have the same truth value, as per the T-scheme. But the T-scheme makes no comment about what truth is, so deflationary theories aren't sneaking in a correspondence theory of truth (well, maybe some are but it's not a necessary features of simply accepting the T-scheme).

Okay, I mean nobody disagrees with saying that true and false are linguistic conventions we agreed to. That's not what's of importance. We could have used any word to denote the meaning behind true and false. And it's the meaning that's at stake.

What the defalationist is saying amounts to there being no meaning other than the lingustic convention, which sounds prima facia absurd, and what I'm trying to argue against. — Marchesk

My initial post was responding to the part of the OP which suggested that deflationary theory, prima facie is just correspondence theory. That's why I pointed out the crucial difference, namely eliminating the use and roles of "fact", correspondence and the like.

So I'm not sure what the deflationist is trying to say here. Are they denying anything else needs to be said about the relationship between Line 3 and Line 1?

One may well say Correspondence is a sufficient but not necessary condition while still be a deflationary theorist, I suppose. To quote from Leeds:

It is not surprising that we should have use for a predicate P with the property that “‘_ _ _ _ _’ is P” an d “_____” are always interdeducible. F or we frequently fin d ourselves in a position to assert each sentence in a certain infinite set z (e.g. w hen all the members of z 11 O n the preceding page Soames makes clear that he takes Tarski to be com mitted both to sufficiency an d to necessity. T he point here is that the “must” obscures the fact that the claims about partial definition can support only the claim that implication of the biconditionals is sufficient.Theories of Truth and Convention T share a common form); lacking the means to formulate infinite conjunctions, we find it convenient to have a single sentence which is warranted precisely when each member of z is warranted. A predicate P with the property described allows us to construct such a sentence: (x)(x ∈ z → P(x)). Truth is thus a notion that we might reasonably want to have on hand, for expressing semantic ascent an d descent, infinite conjunction and disjunction. And given that we want such a notion, it is not difficult to ex plain h o w it is that we have been able to invent one: the Tarski sentences, which axiomatize the notion of truth, are by no means a complicated or recondite axiomatization; the possibility of moving from this axiomatization to the explicit truth definition was always latent in the logical structure of language, though it took a Tarski to discover it. Truth is useful, we may say, as a device of (what Quine calls) disquotation … . To explain the utility of disquotation we need say nothing about the relations between language and the world.

WRT the T-scheme, the right side of the biconditional does not make the other side true, they re logically equivalent. So:

<Snow is white> is true if and only if snow is white

Does not mean "snow is white" is made true because of the whiteness of snow. It means '<Snow is white> is true' has the same truth value as 'snow is white', because each implies the other.

From the IEP:

To capture what he considered to be the essence of the Correspondence Theory, Alfred Tarski created his Semantic Theory of Truth. In Tarski's theory, however, talk of correspondence and of facts is eliminated. (Although in early versions of his theory, Tarski did use the term "correspondence" in trying to explain his theory, he later regretted having done so, and *dropped the term altogether since it plays no role within his theory*.) The Semantic Theory is the successor to the Correspondence Theory. It seeks to preserve the core concept of that earlier theory but without the problematic conceptual baggage.
[...]
We can rewrite Tarski's T-condition on three lines:

The proposition expressed by the German sentence

1) "Schnee ist weiss" is true
2) if and only if
3) snow is white

Line 1 is about truth. Line 3 is not about truth – it asserts a claim about the nature of the world. Thus T makes a substantive claim. Moreover, it avoids the main problems of the earlier Correspondence Theories in that the terms "fact" and "correspondence" play no role whatever.