Yes, there is something of the deflationary account in 's reply. Although ""truth is the adequacy of thought to being" is pretty obtuse, and might look a bit like correspondence.

We can't tell what is actually happening in another person's head, or our own head, when we are believing or are knowing. Why would we think invoking dog-beliefs would help clarify anything? — Fire Ologist

If an agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water.

We attribute belief in order to explain behaviour. We attribute belief tot he dog based on its behaviour.

Whether the dog really has a belief in mind is moot.

...a theory of truth cannot tell us what is true, except perhaps for what is true about truth. — Moliere

Yep. One of the advantages of Davidson's approach is that it takes truth as fundamental. That's a pretty cool move, since any theorising or ratiocination is a seeking for truth, and so presupposes that we might recognise it if we saw it.

That's pretty close to how I think of language — Moliere

Cool. And yes, the next step is the iterative and constructive aspect of language, allowing the construction of our social world.

Let's have no more use of "sky daddy," — Count Timothy von Icarus

The appropriate path would be for you to mark the offending posts for consideration by the mods.

But I doubt that they will much care.

"we can assert or deny any part/whole relation as true of false... based on what is useful," is an approach, but it's hardly a serious one. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's pretty much the approach adopted by Quine and the later Wittgenstein, although somewhat bowdlerised by your pejorative take.

You don't have to take it seriously, of cores, but that is more about you than about doing philosophy. It might provide others with a reason not to take you seriously.

It's debatable if deflationary theories of truth "do not say there are no truths." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The deflationary account is based on the observation that "P is true" is truth- functionally equivalent to "P".

That's pretty much it. To assert that P is true does nothing more than to assert that P. (There's the pragmatics to consider, the emphasis seen in adding "it's true that...").

It is usually mentioned in opposition to the so-called substantive accounts such as correspondence, coherence and pragmatism. I don't think any one of these can provide a complete account of the many uses of "true".

Deflation is different from Tarski's definition of truth in terms of satisfaction, despite the similarity in their use of T-sentences: "Snow is white" is true iff snow is white; here "Snow is white" is in the object language and is true if, in the metalanguage, snow satisfies the predicate "...is white". This is extensional becasue satisfaction would just be that snow is one of the items in the list of things that are white.

None of these accounts say that there are no truths.

So your accusation

(indeed you ridiculed the notion of anything being "actually true") — Count Timothy von Icarus

remains unjustified.

My post: — Count Timothy von Icarus

When one quotes, it is a common courtesy not to remove the automatic link that is created. That enables readers to check on context.

Removing it makes it look as if you are hiding something, that you are not willing to have your work checked.

You think? It reads as "The x that is E is the y that is M". I would have said that was quite neat.

Nice extension. I agree that 's "John is a bachelor" is not a tautology in the sense Wittgenstein is using.

That step would be to invoke Quine's first dogma. Analyticity reduces to synonymy, and so is not about how the world is, but about the language we use.

Yep Since your are talking about individuals, the iota operator could also be used. it is stipulated as ιxEx: The unique x such that x is E.

Then we can write (ιxEx=ιyMy).

"in due course"? — wonderer1

:rofl:


Yes!


There is something profoundly absurd about a thread arguing that time doesn't exist.

Wittgenstein's point (in the Tractatus) was that tautologies don't say anything about how things are. They do not tell us about the world.

Like "The cat is on the mat or the cat is not on the mat". It says nothing.

1) ∃x∃y(Ex ∧ My ∧ (x=y)) — Arcane Sandwich

Notice that this allows that there might be more than one evening star and more than one morning star?

∃x(Ex∧Mx∧∀z(Ez→z=x)∧∀w(Mw→w=x)) might work.

Time doesn't exist. — Corvus

And yet you posted that 19 hrs ago.

Yawn.

By way of returning to the topic,

I agree with you here. I often struggle in making a distinction between human beings and our close cousins, but it really still seems to me that language is what differentiates us from those species. — Moliere

Davidson took language perhaps too seriously, holding that a dog for example could not believe that there was food in its bowl becasue it could not form the sentence "There is food in my bowl".

For my part, I have argued that the dog does not need to form the sentence, but that we can form the sentence may be sufficient for us to ascribe the belief to the dog.

And further, the belief is not a thing in the mind of the dog, but is attributed to the dog by those with language. And in the case of human belief, one is able to attribute belief to oneself. Attributing a belief to itself is not something a dog can do.

Now most of what I say hereabouts is by way of interpreting and explaining others, and this has been the case especially in this thread. But this line of thinking, ill formed and incomplete as it is, I will claim for my own. This by way of displaying a bit of vulnerability for the benefit of my detractors.

This is i think the interesting part of the line of thinking in this and other threads.

To the new paper, then, which I gave a quick read.

Yet, this last remark should already highlight why, despite the soundness of Anselm’s proof, one may rationally reject its conclusion. For although it is true that whoever forms in their mind the concept of that than which nothing greater can be thought is thereby committed to thinking that it exists, there is nothing in Anselm’s argument that would force anyone to think of anything as that than which nothing greater can be thought in the first place. — p.10

Now here he is agreeing with . One is not rationally obligated by the argument to the conclusion.

For any relation transitive relation, we can form a sequence, ...a<b<c... And there will be two possibilities; either the sequence has an end, or the sequence continues indeterminately. So for the alphabet, every letter occurs either before or after any other letter, and there is a last letter - z. But for integers, every integer stands as greater or less then every other integer, and yet there is no greatest integer.

The quote above agrees with this.

And the conclusion? "...the need to have God “seriously” in one’s mind".

So

Here again we hit on the problem of intensional opacity. And here again is the closing off of the argument to critique by those who disagree. — Banno

This by way of my not addressing the arguments here "with any sort of seriousness", and my simple "lack of any real skills of reading comprehension".

Happy to be shown were this goes wrong. It would mark a pleasant change. ]

Edit: bolding added. Learnt that from Leon.

You derail all the threads you participate in to be about you, — Leontiskos

Well, no. I've no need to, since you do it for me. You are the one who is posting about me.

Didn't you put me on your "ignore" list?

Enough.

Well I can quote myself, too.

Here's the footnote quoting Kripke:

“So, we may tentatively define the speaker’s referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfils the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator.”
This is in defence of:
In the Kripkean framework, however, it is also assumed that the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.

Notice that the quote does not mention descriptions at all. And notice also the use of the word "tentatively".

Speaker’s meaning depends on context and intent. But Kripke showed that proper names are rigid designators—they refer to the same entity in all possible worlds. Speaker’s meaning is intensional, or if you prefer, subjective. It varies between individuals, and so cannot account for multiple folk talking about the same thing, nor provide modal rigidity.

You and Klima both appear to have read "the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator" as implying the presence of a description. But the phrase is chosen so as to be neutral. The "conditions" can of course as well be those causal conditions that are the basis of Kripke's theory of reference. — Banno

Ok, I'll keep playing. Yes, the intentional theorist and the causal theorist may well agree that folk can talk about something despite not having a description that fixes the topic.

So what.

What is mistaken is the view that in the "Kripkean framework" the speaker’s reference is to that which the speaker at least believes satisfies his description.

For anyone who wishes to check, here is a better link to Kripke's article: https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Kripke%281977%29.pdf

(added: The crux is that Kripke argues that the semantic meaning of an act of reference can be maintained over the speaker's meaning. He uses this to defend Russell against Donnellen's view. Kripke's argument is that semantic reference is independent of speaker intent.) — Banno

So let's make this thread about me, too. What fun.

...would you call the Rainbow Serpent a Sky Daddy? — Arcane Sandwich

Well no, becasue the Rainbow Serpent is guardian of waterholes and community, a far more earthy deity, worthy of respect.

And Lawson was a city boy.

Too far off topic. I've flagged this conversation for mod consideration.

(This is my, "This is why I'm putting Banno back on ignore" speech.) — Leontiskos

Thank Christ!

Well, yes. That was the joke, for @Moliere's appreciation, but also to see who bites... It worked better than was expected.

The forums periodically suffer a rash of god bothering. We are in the middle of one at the moment.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sky_daddy, if preferred.

Oh, goodie, we are back to talking abut me!

If you don't think my posts appropriate, mark 'em for the mods.

Yep. The pages of analysis on your other thread amount to nothing, for you.

'Sky Daddy" is complementary to an "earth mother". "Sky Father" is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity's name, *Dyēus Phtḗr. — Google's AI

But yes, I did intend it as a pejorative. Your triggers are not my responsibility?

Ah, I see you made the same point.

Presumably any substantive critique of this new paper will also be ignored.

Good thing you'd never engage in anything so rude, then.

And closer to home it doesn't seem that Bonobos and orangoutangs wonder about what reality is fundamentally made of. — Moliere

That they accept and move on with life doesn't mean that they are not awed by thunder or enraptured by a sunrise.

But problems happen when folk think they can prove that their sky daddy exists using the ontological argument, and so that anyone who says otherwise is anathema.

the whole scene involving me and my noises — frank

Yep. Hence Quine's holism, rather than pragmatism.

Yep. Indeed, the unsayable is the most important stuff - as Wittgenstein showed. And what cannot be said, may sometimes be shown. But the less said here, the better... :wink:

However, you did spend an entire thread arguing that "truth" didn't make sense outside of satisfaction, — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a difference between being able to explain truth in terms of satisfaction, and truth not making sense outside of satisfaction. You accuse me of the latter, but what I did was the former.

If you wish to take issue with Tarski's extensional definition of truth, then do so. What that might look like, given the place of Tarski's approach in model theory, is difficult to imagine.

If you wish to take issue with the applicability of Tarski's theory of truth to our use in natural languages, set out your case.

(indeed you ridiculed the notion of anything being "actually true") — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think so. I've argued, elsewhere and at great length, that there are fairly plain facts that are quite true - such as that you are now reading my post.

So if you would stand by this claim, which at best could only be a misunderstanding, point to the post in which I supposedly argued such a nonsense.

Or stop making false accusations. Isn't there something about that in your Bible?

The inscrutability of reference implies that extension is equally inscrutable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To be clear, these are two different things. extensionality is the logical decision to count two sets that contain the very same items as the very same set. So (a,b) = (b,a)=(a,a,b) and so on. The inscrutability of reference is about whether "a" refers to a, "b" refers to b, and so on. Quine's argument shows that when someone else uses a name, say "c", there is no fact of the matter as to what that might refer to. There are two aspects of this, the first that it need not be necessary to fix the referent perfectly in order to get your rabbit stew. The second, that this is one aspect of confirmation holism, that no statement is true or false only as it stands, but that they are true or false as a part of the whole web of belief. Extensionally, to supose "gavagai" refers to the same thing as "rabbit" is to suppose that each element of the set "rabbit" is an element of the set "gavagai" - that's setting out what it would be for "gavaga" to mean "rabbit" in a way that does not rely on the intentionality of speaker meaning or web of belief. But that some individual is a member of the set "gavagai" or "rabbit" is of course open to referential opacity.

Again, extensionality is not a solution for the problem of reference. It was apparently introduced here:

Well, if Joe is consistent, he will agree that water is H2O. Perhaps he will say something like "I know water is dihydrogen monoxide, but it's not H2O"? In which case the issue is not with his belief about water but his belief about the equivalence of "dihydrogen monoxide"and H2O. And we are back to the extensional opacity of beliefs. — Banno

This was in response to a question concerning propositional attitudes, by way of explaining an aspect of Possible World Semantics. It is not being offered as a solution to the issues raised in the gavagai fable.

So no, we do not "uniquely specify a set with one element via extension". That's not it's place. What extensionality might tell us is that if there is a rake in the room, and if we accept that a rake is a tool, then it follows that there is a tool in the room. Extensionality is not so much about reference as about grouping individuals, once reference has been settled.

Now Quine expelled individual variables from his logic. The individuals in his logic are no more than the objects that serve as the values of bound variables. The domain consists in the objects over which the bound variables range. Quine does not assume any metaphysical essence to these objects; they are whatever the theory quantifies over. The individuals in the domain are not specified independently of the properties that belong to them. The approach is holistic.

A primary problem with this, and the reason is it no longer a popular view, is that it is incompatible with possible world semantics.

For Davidson there are no conceptual schemes against which the individuals may be specified. However he makes use of Tarski's approach to truth, which is extensional and makes use of individuals. For Davidson reference is a function of how a truth- theoretical approach explains language. It's pretty much just what we do with nouns.

I want to be clear that there are tensions here, between Quine and Davidson and Kripke, and that there is not a standard, accepted solution to these issues. I am not here offering a complete and coherent account of reference, but attempting to articulate the problems seen by these three great philosophers.

But by refusing to work with the Gavagai fable and recognise it's import, whatever view you are offering - and it remains for me quite unclear what that might be - is outside of this discussion. You have not understood the argument. This is evident in your "the unique set specified by a term will be unknowable". One can stipulate whatever membership one desires. That's what is involved in setting up a domain.

Yep. Thereby hangs many a thread.

There are accounts of primates looking at waterfalls and rainbows in apparent awe. And elephant funereal rituals. And the cat hides from thunder in obvious trepidation.

...things first had to stand out for the human in order for language to begin — Janus

They had a use, yes.

To my eye the arguments about animals, such as as those in the recent Davidson thread, somewhat misfire. Doing stuff comes first, and language is a way of doing stuff. So there is a continuity from prelinguistic to linguistic behaviour. but I think it a one way path. Once the divide is crossed, once language occurs, it is very difficult to go back.

How we should use the word "insect" is not constrained by what seems to count as being an insect? — Janus

Isn't what seems to count as an insect part of what we do with the word "insect"? So yes, what seems to count as an insect can inform how we use the word. An interplay between world and word, neither determining the other.

Probably worth noting that neither Quine nor Davidson would agree with "What is useful determines what is true".

Nor Banno, for that matter.

Then there is a discussion supposing a form of incommensurability. The upshot is that understanding the argument as a proof of god's existence requires a commitment to the existence of god. Not a lot of help for evangelists.

There's also the conceit that the understanding had by a theist is qualitatively different to that had by the pagan, so that they 'could claim to have a full grasp of the meaning of this term".

One wonders how one tells that a fellow theist has "a full grasp of the meaning of this term" - presumably becasue they agree with your argument... :roll:

Here again we hit on the problem of intensional opacity. And here again is the closing off of the argument to critique by those who disagree.

Unless one is able to learn to think and live with the concepts of another person and the thought objects constituted by them, one will always fail to have a real grasp on the meaning of the other person.

How does one know someone has "the concepts of another person and the thought objects constituted by them"? Apparently by agreeing with them. It is open for the theist to say, of anyone who disagrees with their argument, that they have not spent sufficient time "to go through the same long meditative process that the theist did in building up his own concept of God".

All rather sequestered and distasteful, really. "Mutual understanding" here means "agreeing with me".