My name is Michael. The previous sentence is false.

They can't both be true. That would be a contradiction. If one is true then the other must be false. — Michael

If by "the previous sentence," you mean the sentence "My name is Michael," (and what else could you mean?) then this would obviously not be a contradiction. Viz., if "My name is Michael" meant instead "my name is not Michael," then this sentence could be true in a situation in which your name was nonetheless not Michael (in fact, given what the sentence meant, it would have to be that your name wasn't Michael).

In the current situation, it is of course true that whenever this sentence is true, your name is Michael, but that is because the sentence meaning that your name is Michael, and having the form "My name is Michael," accidentally coincide in the language as it is spoken now. However, this is not necessary: in situations in which these things come apart, one can be true while the other is false.

The latter is the meat of your proposal: that in any situation in which the sentence is true, your name is Michael. But this is false.

(Also, don't use sentences with indexicals like "my," which makes your claim doubly false for obvious reasons, but I have ignored it here for clarity).

No, I am not ignoring this; in fact I just explicitly addressed it above. I was using the same sentence in both cases, viz "there are no dinosaurs." So I do not see what Michael thinks this objection is buying him, or how it refutes what looks to me like a clear counterexample, in the face of which the biconditional is obviously not true.

No. I'm saying that given the sentence mentioned on the one side is the sentence used on the other side, "X" is true iff X. That's not to say that some other schema won't work given that different sentences are used. — Michael

I don't understand. I just showed above that this isn't true, by showing a counterexample. You responded that I switched sentences.

But I did not -- I used the same sentence, viz. "there are no dinosaurs," in both cases. In what sense are those two not the same sentence?

You say that one is in English, and the other is in the new English. I say this makes no sense -- the same sentence is being used in both languages.

How much more evident can a contradiction get? — Michael

For me, it's evidently just not a contradiction, and it's puzzling to me why you think it is. You have a claim about a sentence on the one hand, and a claim about a name on the other; presumably, to say these contradict is to say that one side of the conjunction cannot be true while the other is false: but clearly this is possible, as I showed above, so I'm not sure why you think there is any 'evident' contradiction at all.

There is likely a missing premise that you cannot articulate, and I suspect that when that premise is spelled out, the use-mention error will become more clear.

@Michael, if I understand you correctly, your claim hinges on saying that the same sentence cannot exist in more than one language. Is that correct?

As I see it, a sentence is a certain grammatical object -- a string of morphemes or words, or a syntactic structure, whatever you like -- and that same object can receive different interpretations. It seems for your objection to make sense, you would have to claim this is effectively not possible, which would commit you to a substantial view on the identity conditions of sentences (I'm not sure what they would be, but it looks wrong).

Thus I am not talking about some sentence in English and then some other sentence in the new English, and so I 'switch' nothing. There is just one sentence, namely this one --> "there are no more dinosaurs," and that sentence means one thing now, but could mean something else later.

And given that it's implicit that the sentence mentioned is the sentence used, if "X" is not true then not X must be true to avoid contradiction. — Michael

This is false. The fact that the sentence mentioned is the same as the one used in no way shows that this must be true to avoid contradiction. Perhaps you can show how this is a contradiction?

I can show that it's not, by showing that in a given scenario, one can be true while the other is false:

Suppose X = "there are no more dinosaurs," where we slot in a use of this sentence for the variable "X."

Now, suppose that in Future English, "there are no more dinosaurs" means the same thing that "there are still dinosaurs" means now; that is, it means that there are still dinosaurs.

Now, take a situation in which people speak future English, in which there are no more dinosaurs, since it is the future. In that situation, ex hypothesi," "there are no more dinosaurs" is not true, since it means that there are still dinosaurs, and there aren't. If that sentence were true in the future situation, then there would still be dinosaurs, since that is what the sentence "there are no more dinosaurs" means in this alternate situation. Since there are no more dinosaurs, the sentence is false.

But, ex hypothesi, there are no more dinosaurs in this situation, so X obtains in it, that is, in this situation, X (there are no more dinosaurs).

So this is a situation in which "there are no more dinosaurs" is false, yet there are no more dinosaurs (precisely because "there are no more dinosaurs" means that there are still dinosaurs, and there are not by hypothesis).

There is nothing contradictory about such a situation, and therefore there is no contradiction as you suppose. Somewhere you have gone wrong in your reasoning, and this counterexample demonstrates that: it is another question where you went wrong, and I suspect, as I have said, that you are deeply confusing use and mention.

---

I have shown you why this is not a contradiction as you claim. Why do you think it is a contradiction? I've seen no defense of this other than asserting it, but given that (a) this assertion looks absurd on its face, and (b) we can construct a situation to demonstrate that it is wrong, it seems to me that you cannot go on claiming this unless you respond to this situation.

That it was the case that P can be expressed by us with the sentence "P", which is true if and only if P, right? Hence it is correct to say that the two sentences (1) "P" and (2) '"P" is true' are logically equivalent, which can be expressed thus: — Pierre-Normand

Again, no. This is the error. Whether a certain sentence or string of words is true or not in a hypothetical situation (not now) does not guarantee that the situation that is described by that string of words in the language as it currently is now, holds in the hypothetical situation. In the hypothetical situation, "P" might very well mean not P, and so the truth of "P" could very well imply not P, rather than P.

↪Sapientia What? The following two are equivalent:

It is the case that my name is Michael
"My name is Michael" is true — Michael

They are not equivalent; one is about a sentence, the other about a name. The properties of the sentence might change, while the name stays the same, or vice-versa.

Michael,

The disquotational schema as you are using it is simply false, and your whole notion of how these things works seems to be predicated on it. So it would be best to return to why it's false.

The proposal:

"X" is true iff X.

Let's show that neither direction holds. First, left to right:

If "X" is true, then X.

Suppose that in an alternate state of the language in the future, "X" means the same as "not X" means now; that is, "X" means that not X. Suppose that further, in this situation, not X. In such a situation, "X" (that sentence) is true, yet it is not the case that X. In fact, the truth of that sentence guarantees just the contrary, that not X. So this conditional is false.

Now the right to left direction:

If X, then "X" is true.

Take the case of a time before there is languages, and let X be that there are dinosaurs. In this case, there are dinosaurs, yet it is not the case that "there are dinosaurs" is true, since no such sentence exists ex hypothesi, and a fortiori no such sentence is true. So this conditional is not true either.

So the disquotational schema is false, since neither of its conditional directions holds. Without it, this entire line of thought is fruitless.

---

I think, in the end, you confuse claiming that X with something like saying "X," which is the only way I can make sense of your line of thought -- but this is fallacious, as shown above. Sentences do not in any way talk about themselves and claim themselves to be true -- that would require a mention of the sentence in order to predicate truth of it. Yet when sentences are used, they talk about the things they talk about, like horses and rabbits. The truth of a sentence, and the obtaining of the state of affairs that a sentence describes, are simply not the same thing; your philosophy of language is basically and fundamentally wrong and hinges on a use-mention error.

A use-mention error is whenever you confuse the use of words with the mention of words; the use of words typically refers to thing other than themselves, while you seem to believe that the use of words refer back to themselves, as if the use were a mention. Thus you say things like:

In that situation if "horses are rabbits" is true then horses are rabbits

Thinking that a true sentence that mentions "horses are rabbits," i.e. "in that situation, 'horses are rabbits' is true" (which is true) is the same as a use of that bit of language, i.e. "horses are rabbits in that situation," which is obviously false (horses can't be rabbits; any six year old can tell you this).

And you say things like:

Assertions implicitly assert their own truth, and so to say that X is Y is to say that "X is Y" is true, and vice versa.

Confusing the mention of a piece of language in order to predicate something about it, with a use of that very same piece of language.

These mistakes are impossible to make if the use-mention distinction is understood.

Read the Wiki article on the use-mention distinction. It will clear things up.

In that situation if "horses are rabbits" is true then horses are rabbits (where the language of the sentence mentioned is the language of the sentence used). — Michael

No, they are not; horses can't be rabbits, that's nonsense. What that sentence's truth means is that in that situation, the sky is blue. It means nothing about horses or rabbits at all, since in that situation "horse" does not refer to horses, and "rabbit" does not refer to rabbits, since ex hypothesi the words mean something else.

(where the language of the sentence mentioned is the language of the sentence used). — Michael

Then translate the argument back into English; it should still be the same argument, and therefore just as good as it was before. Why do you insist on having to use a made-up language in order for your argument to make sense? I am trying ot show you that the reason you do this is because the argument does not make sense, and rests on an equivocation. If you translate the argument back again, you will see this; translation does not affect the soundness of arguments.

Also, statements don't implicitly state their own truth; statements are about things, not about themselves, clearly. When I say, "the sky is blue," I say that the sky is blue; I do not say that "the sky is blue" is true. These conditions might correspond when accidentally language is such that the sentence means the sky is blue, but counterfactually they come apart. Again, these are all use-mention errors. You confuse talking about things with talking about words.

This is not a contradiction. Suppose for example that in a counterfactual situation, "horses are rabbits" means the sky is blue. Then in that situation, if "horses are rabbits" is true (and thus the sky is blue), it is nonetheless not the case that horses are rabbits, which is nonsense anyhow; it is merely the case that the sky is blue.

Get it?

We've already been over this, though. Your argument doesn't work and depends on an equivocation because arguments should be good whatever language they're presented in; if you translate your argument back to English, it should be the same argument; and the result will either be a tautology, not a statement of the dependence of what it means to be a certain kind of animal on language, or unsound.

The Great Whatever accepts the first premise, the T-schema shows the second premise, and so the conclusion follows. — Michael

The T-schema is false, at least as you interpret it, as I have repeatedly shown you.

If I say that "horse" denotes having properties A, B, and C and if I say that this animal is a horse then I am saying that this animal has properties A, B, and C. — Michael

If you say that an animal is a horse, you are saying that it has properties A, B, and C, regardless of what words you use to say that it is a horse.

Your confusion is that you think that to say something is a horse is to actually use the word 'horse,' but this is not so. Some uses of 'horse' cannot be used to call something a horse, as when the language is different; and many instances of calling something a horse do not use the word 'horse' either, as when 'caballo' is used instead.

To call something a horse is not to use the word 'horse' to refer to it, except accidentally in cases where these two things coincide, as they do in English. So your conditional is pointless: to call something a horse is to say that it has such properties regardless of the language, and so your point is not made: it in no way depends on what you say 'horse' means, what properties you say something has if you call it a horse.

No it's not, quit stalling. Unless he intimidates you (which is why you have ot insult his hair).

No, I haven't. I'm looking at the wiki page on it, it seems interesting. Reading is just so hard though. And yeah, Borges is kind of my standard, not only the mythology, but the use of terse academic prose to hint at painful underlying realities. Even if Illuminatus! turns out to be cute as you put it, I still feel like it's part of my education to read it. No luck with anyone getting interested in my writing yet, but I feel like sometimes reading things you don't completely like is still a necessary part of the job, and I want to work actively at being better at it (and free up the schedule by reading a lot less philosophy!)

Where are your comments on Schopenhauer? Or did you give up on them because you realized it was hopeless?

Bible, Iliad, Gilgamesh, Gnostic Gospels / Apocryphon, and I'm starting LotR and after the Worm Ouroboros. I also read A Song of Ice and Fire, but it struck me 'modernist' by high fantasy standards.

There are also a couple of 'modern Gnostic' books I want to look into, like the Illuminatus! trilogy, but that's more pomo (a long time ago I had an interest in chaos magic and Discordianism, which seems to be in the same vein). I like the connection between actual myth and 'fictional myth,' including parody myths, which is in a way what high fantasy is -- and I'm trying at the same to to go through Borges in the native Spanish, which is making the desire for mythmaking fresh for me.

No, that sounds fun. I am taking a break from 20th century writing for a while, though, at least the 'real literature' stuff, and reading fantasy, epics, and religious texts for a while, to get into worldbuilding and lore over psychological and self-indulgent stuff. I will put it on a list, but sometimes I never get to things on these lists...

I want to write a high fantasy novella / Gnostic fairy tale!

Kant didn't promise enlightenment. Nor did Wittgenstein. — csalisbury

Forgive the contradiction, but they absolutely did. It is apparent from their writings that they saw themselves as exalted -- Kant as a historic 'Great Man' who would culminate metaphysics, and Wittgenstein as a solipsistic genius figure.

I have my problems with both thinkers but at least they're interesting. — csalisbury

I think their insipidity is hard to get to because of the mystique surrounding them. Part of it comes from the refusal to consider the possibility that you might be talking to a 'joker and bastard;' the assumption is that if they were mistaken, they were nonetheless 'deeply' so, their profundity being assumed.

But if you read Kant as a diluter of better minds, regurgitating more radical and interesting philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume, to make them palatable to mainstream Christianity, everything he says makes more sense. And if you read Wittgenstein as a man with mental illness, ditto.

Cioran had very well-styled hair - like Schopenhauer - and wrote very lyrically about how hard it was to deal with the pain of thought. And how beautiful it is to deal with the pain of thought. But after a certain level of exposure, Cioran gets to seem a lot like a suburban kid in a band who sings about how hard his well-cut peacoated life is. Sorry Cioran, seems tough. But you already made your point in the first 1000 words you wrote. Why go on? Why go on UG? The suspicion is they go on because, cold and bold as they are, they cant do without people talking about them. My hunch is UG resented J Krishnamurti's success. Which isn't to say I buy into J's ideas. It's just painfully obviously that UG has a bone to pick. — csalisbury

I don't really feel like I have to defend Cioran, because I agree he lacks substance, even if he was sometimes a great writer. Maybe UG also wasn't a great thinker -- but then, neither was Kant or Jiddu, and UG has a kind of humor and honesty most people don't.

I think that the power of UG lies in his straight up calling people like Jiddu what they were, hacks and frauds. I think the phrase 'jokers and bastards' should be canon. Reading UG woke me from a sort of dogmatic slumber, and I now think a large number of philosophers in the West are 'jokers and bastards' in his sense of the term, and that Westerners are enthralled by the 'genius' of hacks like Kant and Wittgenstein just as Easterners are enthralled by the 'enlightenment' of hacks like Jiddu.

If the "horse" denotes properties A, B, and C then to be a horse is to have properties A, B, and C. I can't make sense of it any other way. — Michael

To be a horse is to have properties A, B, and C, regardless of the words used or regardless of whether there is any language at all. There were horses, and they were horses precisely because they were a certain kind of animal, long before there was any language. The creation of language did not create horses, nor what it takes to be a horse.

What part of this do you disagree with?

Do you agree that:

1) There were horses before the word 'horse'

2) They were horses because they were a certain kind of animal

3) Now, horses are horses because they are a certain kind of animal

So clearly, what it takes to be a horse didn't change, and so is in no way dependent on, the existence or meaning of the word 'horse.'

Wouldn't you say that to be a horse is to have the property denoted by the word "horse". — Michael

Absolutely not, and this is the core of the confusion. To be a horse is to have the property of being a certain animal. It so happens that to be that kind of animal, and to be the bearer of the property denoted by 'horse,' accidentally coincide in current English. But they need not.

Which property a word denotes is a linguistic matter. Your confusion is thinking that therefore the property somehow is. To be a horse is to have a certain property; and this property does not change with the meanings of the words changing. It is, as always, the property of being a certain kind of animal. Whether or not any words at all pick out this property is irrelevant.

↪The Great Whatever What I'm trying to say is that identity is a linguistic imposition. Which is not the same as saying that physiology or marital status is a linguistic imposition. You seem to accept this about proper nouns like "Michael" but for some reason reject this about common nouns like "horse". I honestly don't see why there would be any difference. — Michael

Proper nouns and common nouns are different linguistic items. They have different morphology, syntax, and semantics. Common nouns are proprety-denoting; they are true of individuals that bear a certain property. Proper names are directly referential; they refer to individuals independently of what properties they bear. Whether or not one bears a name is a linguistic matter, but whether one bears a certain property is not.

Okay, think of it this way. An argument should be good no matter what language it's presented in. Therefore, no matter what the result of swapping in your new language's words, we should be able to translate back into English and get the same, good, argument.

Now, when you translate back, one of two things will happen. Either you will have found that your argument merely states a tautology -- that horses are horses or rabbits are rabbits -- which is not what you wanted to show (rather, you wanted to show something about the relation between language use and what it is to be some animal), or your argument will come out false.

Do you see the problem? Notice that the use of Spanish is irrelevant to the argument, but you want the use of your made up language to be essential to your argument. This is I suspect because your argument hinges on an equivocation, and you want to use the made up sense of the word while slipping through the back door an implication that you have made some point, in English, about how language affects which creatures are which animals, or what conditions it takes to be a sort of animal.

None of this validates the disquotational schema, which remains false, and it remains false that to what it is to be a horse in any way depends on language. To be a horse is to be a certain kind of animal; what the language has to say about it doesn't matter.

On the other hand notice that if you translated back from Spanish, 'caballo' translates 'horse,' not 'rabbit,' as would the translation be back from your invented English.

Because you have been trying to make an argument in English, not an invented language. If you make the argument in an invented language, in translating it back into English, you would have to translate 'horse' as 'rabbit,' which would result in the conclusion that rabbits would be rabbits, not that horses would be rabbits, which is what you want to say.

↪The Great Whatever Do you accept that to be un caballo is to be a horse? — Michael

Yes.

If we change the meaning of "horse" then what it means to be a horse (in the updated language) is different to what it meant to be a horse (in the archaic language). — Michael

No. To be a horse is to be a certain kind of animal, regardless of the language. You cannot change what it is to be a horse by changing what you use 'horse' to refer to. If you could, then rabbits would become horses because you called them 'horse,' but they do not become horses, they remain rabbits. And you cannot say 'I don't mean a biological transformation...' because that is precisely what would be required. A rabbit could not change into a horse without changing biologically. That is, it could not change into a horse without changing into a horse.

What?

The sentence "to be X is to be Y" is equivalent to the sentence "'X' means 'Y'". — Michael

No, it isn't. To show this, it suffices to show that one can be true, while the other false.

Suppose that 'horse' meant 'rabbit.' Then to be a horse would not be to be a rabbit (which is absurd). To be a horse would still be to be a certain ind of animal, the same kind as before.

I'm saying that to be a bachelor is to be an unmarried man iff we use the words "bachelor" and "unmarried man" to talk about the same thing. — Michael

Nope. To be a bachelor is to be an unmarried man, period. In Rome, unmarried men were already bachelors, even though the terms were not used.

I'm not saying that those people who are bachelors are unmarried men iff we use the words "bachelor" and "unmarried man" to talk about the same thing.

You seem to think I'm saying the latter. — Michael

Explain to me how this differs from what you just said above. It seems to me you are just asserting then denying the same thing.

So what makes it the case that to be a bachelor just is to be an unmarried man? The fact that we use the terms "bachelor" and "unmarried man" to refer to the same sort of thing. — Michael

No, bachelors are unmarried men regardless of what words we used. The terms are synonymous now, which means that no matter what, bachelors are always unmarried men. This persists even if the language changes. It is not as if the way we use the words makes bachelors unmarried men; to be a bachelor simply is to be an unmarried man, period, regardless of what language is used. All the language does is decide that two terms hook up to the same interchangeable group.

Is what you say here true? — Michael

Yes, that's why I said it.

If so, what does its truth have to do with horses being equine animals? Nothing? — Michael

In the language as it is now used, it reports that horses are equine animals, which is true. This in no way means, as you think, that horses being equine animals is dependent upon the language I speak existing at all. They are, and always were, equine animals regardless.

So I can, in principle, accept the truth of your claim "to be a horse just is to be an equine animal" but not accept that to be a horse just is to be an equine animal, or accept that to be a horse just is to be an equine animal but not accept the truth of your claim "to be a horse just us to be an equine animal"?

In principle, yes, if the language were different! This is precisely the point. If 'horse' meant 'rabbit,' You could very well accept the claim that 'horses are rabbits' is true, yet for all that you would not accept, as you seem to think, that horses are rabbits. Rather, since 'horse' meant 'rabbit,' you would be accepting that rabbits are rabbits.

Doesn't this strike you as nonsensical? — Michael

No; I think, again, you are deeply confused about use and mention. The above argument, to which you are not responding, is meant to show this. But to bring it home, let me generalize to the worst case.

According to your claim, with the biconditional, for any sentence "P," if P, then it must be that "P" is true.

Now, it follows from this that before language existed, there was nothing, as follows:

Consider a case where there is no language, and so there are no sentences. You have agreed that whether a sentence is true or not depends on the way it is used; and since no language exists, a fortiori no language is used, and therefore no sentence is true. So I can take any P, and it will not hold, since nothing can hold unless the corresponding sentence "P" is true.

So since in such a case "something exists" is not true, since there are no sentences and so no true sentences, it follows that it is not the case that something exists.

And you can do the same for any sentence you like, to prove any absurdity you like.

Your problem is in thinking that everything depends on language as it is used now in order to be so; but it does not. And this is why the iff schema you present is clearly false.

Surely if I accept the truth of your claim "to be a horse just is to be an equine animal" then ipso facto I accept that to be a horse just is to be an equine animal, and vice versa. — Michael

You do, if the language is as it currently is, but counterfactually, if the words mean different things, you obviously do no such thing. Yet these counterfactual situations are precisely what is of interest in the iff claim.

Okay, let me try to break this down. You claim:

"Horses are equine animals" is true iff horses are equine animals.

Here is the proof that this is false. By the right-to-left of the biconditional, this follows:

If horses are equine animals, then "horses are equine animals" is true.

Now consider a case before the advent of language. Since there is no sentence "horses are equine animals," a fortiori such a sentence cannot be true. But then, by modus tollens, it follows that in this case, horses are not equine animals.

But to be a horse just is to be an equine animal. Therefore, it follows that in this case, horses are not horses.

But this is a contradiction; so you are wrong.

No. Horses are equine animals, period, regardless of whether any sentences are true at all. Horses being equine animals is in no way dependent on language, so their being equine animals cannot be equivalent to any sentence being true.

Horses were equine animals before there was any language, because to be an equine animal just is to be a horse, ergo, it is false that 'horses are equine animals iff "horses are equine animals" is true,' since they were equine animals (that is, they were horses), long before there were any sentences to be true.

No. For example, in a language in which "horse" and "rabbit" are synonyms, "Horses are rabbits" is true, yet horses are not rabbits (which is absurd; horses are not rabbits, and changing words around will not make them rabbits).