I wouldn't think so; hence the categorical difference.

I have a piece of paper with the word “coin” written on it. Is that a coin?

I can speak for others, but I'd say it means the same thing (roughly) as not-P. — Pie

According to who is not-P true? If it's not Bob endorsing not-P, then who is?

'P is true',if spoken by Bob, is roughly equivalent to Bob saying 'P' or endorsing 'P' when said by someone else, perhaps with a 'yes indeed.' — Pie

My point is that when you say "...but not-P is true", then you are using "is true" in a non-deflationary way.

Bob believes P is true while not-P is true. — Pie

What does "not-P is true" mean according to the deflationist?

One can believe that P is true... — Pie

One can believe that they approve of P?

...while in fact not-P is true. — Pie

Is it "in fact" you approve of not-P? Or "in fact" not-P despite your approval of P?

Your proposed translation might work for 'I can believe I claim P is true although not-P is true.' — Pie

But, again, the last word in the statement is not an endorsement! What makes not-P true is that there are no plums in the icebox, not that you are disendorsing or disapproving of the statement "there are plums in the icebox". You already approved that statement!

No. I'm surprised you ignore the crucial word 'believe.' To believe P is true is just to believe P.
I can believe P although or despite ~P. — Pie

Fine, let me translate it properly.

I can believe P is true although not-P is true. — Pie

This can be translated as: you can believe you endorse P although you endorse not-P?

I can think/believe/assert that it's true that plums are in the icebox without it being true that plums are in the icebox. (The grammar of 'believe' is not the grammar of 'true.') — Pie

What you are failing to notice is that you are not using "true" here in the sense of an endorsement. If it's not true that "there are plums in the icebox", does that mean (only) that you disendorse it? If so, then why do you also endorse it (or believe that you endorse it)?

You said earlier:

'True' is primitive or absolute in its simply endorsing P. It's confusingly, brutally simple. — Pie

So if "is true" does the work of simply endorsing P, then wrt your statement:

I can believe P is true although not-P is true. — Pie

This can be translated as: you endorse P although you endorse not-P?

I can simply think that P is true (believe P) with P not actually being true. — Pie

What does the second instance of "true" mean in the statement above?

Where's the contradiction ? — Pie

If "true" means only "endorsing P", then that's all there is to the truth. Therefore, how can a justified belief be false? In what sense could we "still be wrong" about P if to say that P is "true" is merely to endorse it?

If I claim that P is true, I am expressing a belief, correct ? — Pie

Yes. But how do you reconcile that with this:

A justified belief may be false. An unjustified belief may be true. We could, no matter how careful and clever, still be wrong.

What is the grammar of being right or wrong ? True or false ? To me it seems absolute. It is not reducible or exchangeable for warrant. — Pie

In general, concepts have public meanings, however imperfectly grasped or exploited by this or that user. I'm suggesting that grammar of 'true,' or at least the part of it relevant here, is different than that of 'justified' or 'warranted' or 'likely.' 'True' is primitive or absolute in its simply endorsing P. It's confusingly, brutally simple. — Pie

But where you said:

A justified belief may be false. An unjustified belief may be true. We could, no matter how careful and clever, still be wrong.

What is the grammar of being right or wrong ? True or false ? To me it seems absolute. It is not reducible or exchangeable for warrant. — Pie

That's not about endorsing P. That's about P being true or false regardless of our endorsement. Therefore, "true" does not mean "endorsing P" in that sense. You want "true" to mean both "endorsing P" but also something else.

Yes, deflation does not make use of truth-conditions to define truth, since that would be circular. I don't see what it is you are missing - unless you think that any theory of truth must make use of truth conditions...? — Banno

I don't think that any theory of truth must make use of truth conditions. You said:

...the right hand side of A T-sentence is being used, it's where the spinning wheel of the T-sentence hits the bitumen of the world. — Banno

What I'm "missing" is why you used a truth-conditional T-sentence to explain the deflationary theory.

As I understand it, nothing in the deflationist's theory of truth "hits the bitumen of the world".
— Luke

Sure, on that account the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth. As I have said several times, T-sentences allow us to either assume meaning and explain truth, or to assume truth and explain meaning.

So of course it is assumed that ("p" is true) means the same as (p). — Banno

Are you suggesting that deflationists have a theory of meaning rather than truth? I don't see how this is relevant to the present discussion.

Also, if you agree that nothing in the deflationist's theory of truth "hits the bitumen of the world", then I don't understand why you said:

...the right hand side of A T-sentence is being used, it's where the spinning wheel of the T-sentence hits the bitumen of the world. — Banno

I took you to be arguing for the deflationary theory.

The right hand side of the t-sentence is being used, not talked about. It shows what makes the left side true. — Banno

How is the right hand side being used? Is the left hand side not being used? Is the left hand side meaningless because it is not being used? If so, then how are the two sides equivalent?

See 4.9. — Banno

4.9 states that "deflationism is incompatible with truth-conditional theories of meaning" and that "most deflationists reject truth-conditional semantics".

Incidentally, 4.9 also states that "Others have gone further, arguing positively that there is no incompatibility between deflationism and truth-conditional theories." I suggested the same earlier in the discussion.

Perhaps it would be most accurate to say that deflationary theories remain incomplete, but offer a better account that any other theories. — Banno

How does the deflationary theory offer a better account of truth than other theories?

'True' has a use like the twelve on a traditional clockface or North on a compass. Or like the knight on a chessboard. A justified belief may be false. An unjustified belief may be true. We could, no matter how careful and clever, still be wrong.

What is the grammar of being right or wrong ? True or false ? To me it seems absolute. It is not reducible or exchangeable for warrant.

We can always be wrong about the world, because it doesn't make sense to say we could be wrong about being able to be wrong about it. The minimal specification of the world seems to be as that which we can be wrong about. The negation is incoherent. "It is wrong to claim we can we be wrong." — Pie

I agree that "true" has a conventional use(s). I believe that, according to the deflationary view, the word "true" is typically used to demonstrate assent to a truth bearer.

I find what you say here to be inconsistent with the deflationary view. According to you, the meaning of "true" is independent of anyone's beliefs or judgments. This is not the deflationary use/meaning of "true" as I understand it. Your use of the word "true" here seems more closely aligned with the correspondence theory.

We never find that it is true, in my view. A conjecture becomes a belief.

In my view, truth is absolute. — Pie

Then it’s not about our use of the word “true”?

'It is true that plums are in the ice box' does basically what 'there are plums in the icebox' does. — Pie

But not always. "There are plums in the icebox" could also be used as a conjecture, or to deceive, or as a metaphor, or in other ways. It is only if the statement is used as an assertion that "p" and "p is true" have the same meaning. In that case, the statement is used to indicate that the statement is true. However, if it is used as a conjecture instead, then it could be either true or false and we would need to investigate whether the truth conditions for "there are plums in the icebox" are met or not. And I think the latter case tells us something different about the meaning of "true". If we find that it is true, then we will assert "p" to mean "p is true". But what does it mean to find that it is true?

You are now creating further issues by drawing a distinction between a truth bearer without meaning (i.e. string-of-words) and a truth bearer with meaning.
— Luke

It's just the use/mention distinction. — Pie

Okay, but it’s not part of my argument (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/730759) at all. I assume that truth bearers are meaningful already. The distinction I am making, and the one I see you and the deflationists as collapsing, is between meaningful truth bearers and the world; between “snow is white” and the colour of actual snow.

To me the terminology is not that important. — Pie

Let's call you a correspondence theorist, then.

I would like us to do more with less, so I am defending an approach that uses the string-of-words (signifier) on one side and the worldly meaning (signified object-concept) of that string on the other. — Pie

But truth bearers are already meaningful. You are now creating further issues by drawing a distinction between a truth bearer without meaning (i.e. string-of-words) and a truth bearer with meaning. What I was formerly arguing against was that a meaningful truth bearer (e.g. "snow is white") is identical with what it signifies (worldly white snow).

If you want to draw a distinction between a meaningful truth bearer and what it signifies, then this commits you to a non-deflationary theory of truth. Again:

...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. — SEP article on Truth

Your defense of the use of a meaningful, truth apt signifier/truth bearer on one side and a signified worldly object/state of affairs on the other side links truth value to truth conditions. According to the quote above, this means you have a non-deflationary theory of truth.

according to the deflationary theory, the content of a truth bearer is unrelated to truth conditions; that is, the left hand side of a T sentence is unrelated to the right hand side. Or, in other words, the meaning of a sentence is unrelated to the facts of the world. — Luke

To expand further on this, the deflationary theory says that the meaning of a true sentence is just a fact of the world. Or, as @Pie says:

The meanings of true assertions just are the world. — Pie

If so, then no distinction can be drawn between the two sides of a deflationist's T sentence. Hence:

1. A statement ("p") is true iff a statement ("p"); or

2. A fact of the world (p) is true iff a fact of the world (p).

These both mean the same thing according to the deflationary theory, as it draws no distinction between statements (or their meanings) and facts of the world. The problem with this is:

1 is unrelated to the world, provides no information about the world, and has no truth conditions; and
2 is non-linguistic, is not a truth bearer (e.g. a proposition), and does not have a truth value.

The deflationist cannot have statements/beliefs on one side as distinct from the world on the other side without committing themselves to a non-deflationary theory of truth.

...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. — SEP article on Truth

Why wouldn't 'snow' refer that way ? Isn't what you say about snow true ? — Pie

Yes, it's true that snow is white for the correspondence theorist due to the facts of the world. I'm not sure for what reason a deflationist would say that "snow is white" is true; it's not because of any facts of the matter. As I have repeatedly asked: what would make that statement true? Or, how would the truth conditions for that statement be met? According to the SEP article, truth is independent of the meaning of the statement and "deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all."

The meanings of true assertions just are the world. — Pie

I disagree. If "the meaning of a word is its use in the language" for a large class of cases, then the same or similar can probably be said for the meaning of a sentence. I note that there are many parts of the world that cannot be used in the language, and that language typically involves the use mostly of words and gestures, and not things like asteroids, chairs or lakes. Sticks and stones may break my bones...

In opposition to this, the right hand side of A T-sentence is being used, it's where the spinning wheel of the T-sentence hits the bitumen of the world. — Banno

According to the SEP, Tarski is not a deflationist:

Tarski considered (T) to provide a criterion of adequacy for any theory of truth, thereby allowing that there could be more to say about truth than what the instances of the schema cover. Given that, together with the fact that he took the instances of (T) to be contingent, his theory does not qualify as deflationary. — SEP article on Deflationism About Truth

As I understand it, nothing in the deflationist's theory of truth "hits the bitumen of the world". (Also, do you mean the "actual world"?) It might be worth summarising section 6.1 on truth bearers firstly:

Candidates (for truth bearers) typically include beliefs, propositions, sentences, and utterances...

Consider the role of truth-bearers in the correspondence theory, for instance... It is in virtue of being meaningful that truth-bearers are able to enter into correspondence relations. Truth-bearers are things which meaningfully make claims about what the world is like, and are true or false depending on whether the facts in the world are as described.

Exactly the same point can be made for the anti-realist theories of truth we saw in section 4.2, though with different accounts of how truth-bearers are meaningful, and what the world contributes...

Though Tarski works with sentences, the same can be said of his theory. The sentences to which Tarski’s theory applies are fully interpreted, and so also are meaningful. They characterize the world as being some way or another, and this in turn determines whether they are true or false. Indeed, Tarski needs there to be a fact of the matter about whether each sentence is true or false (abstracting away from context dependence), to ensure that the Tarski biconditionals do their job of fixing the extension of ‘is true’. (But note that just what this fact of the matter consists in is left open by the Tarskian apparatus.)

We thus find the usual candidate truth-bearers linked in a tight circle: interpreted sentences, the propositions they express, the belief speakers might hold towards them, and the acts of assertion they might perform with them are all connected by providing something meaningful. This makes them reasonable bearers of truth.

However, as I have quoted more than once regarding the deflationary theory:

To a deflationist, the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth. — SEP article on Truth

I take this to mean that truth is unrelated to the meaning of a truth bearer, such as a statement, proposition or belief.

The same section also notes that:

...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all.

I take this to mean that, according to the deflationary theory, the content of a truth bearer is unrelated to truth conditions; that is, the left hand side of a T sentence is unrelated to the right hand side. Or, in other words, the meaning of a sentence is unrelated to the facts of the world.

Well, I'm glad for you, despite still not grasping what it is you were asking...:wink: — Banno

I lost sight of it myself. What got me into the discussion was @Pie's position as stated in the OP:

In other words, for any proposition p, p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact." But is it not cleaner to just understand p as a fact, iff it is true ? — Pie

I have difficulty accepting that if a proposition is true, then the proposition is then identical with the fact that the proposition describes. So, for example, if "snow is white" is true, then the linguistic proposition somehow becomes the worldly fact that snow is white.

The SEP article on Truth that you linked to supports that this is the deflationary view:

To a deflationist, the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth. — SEP article on Truth

I don't see how it can be true that snow is white if "snow" does not refer to the worldly soft white bits of frozen water that fall from the sky in cold weather.

Suppose p⊃q. One might phrase this as "p makes q true". No causality is implied.

That's how I read the bit from Davidson you cite. — Banno

And my saying that "p makes q true" needn't commit me to a causal implication either.

So you are not talking of any of the accepted truthmaker theories. — Banno

Yes, as I've explained more than once, I was using the term "truthmaker" only as an expedient for whatever makes a sentence true. As I also stated in a recent post, the concept of truth conditions is closer to what I was aiming for when I used the term "truthmaker" earlier.

See Truthmakers in the Sep article on truth. I(t makes it clear that the theory of truthmakers is what you are rejecting, that "there must be a thing that makes each truth true". As that short section makes clear, the rejection of truthmakers amounts to the rejection of correspondence. Riffing on that, the attempt to introduce truthmakers into the discussion was a fraught attempt to reinvigorate correspondence theories of truth. — Banno

Thanks for the link. Section 6 of the article discusses my point and answers the questions I've been raising here. Specifically:

As we explained Convention T in section 2.2, the primary role of a Tarski biconditional of the form ┌┌ϕ┐ is true if and only if ϕ┐ is to fix whether ϕ is in the extension of ‘is true’ or not. But it can also be seen as stating the truth conditions of ϕ. Both rely on the fact that the unquoted occurrence of ϕ is an occurrence of an interpreted sentence, which has a truth value, but also provides its truth conditions upon occasions of use.

...

For instance, for a simple sentence like ‘Snow is white’, the theory tells us that the sentence is true if the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies ‘white’. This can be understood as telling us that the truth conditions of ‘Snow is white’ are those conditions in which the referent of ‘Snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’.

As we saw in sections 3 and 4, the Tarskian apparatus is often seen as needing some kind of supplementation to provide a full theory of truth. A full theory of truth conditions will likewise rest on how the Tarskian apparatus is put to use. In particular, just what kinds of conditions those in which the referent of ‘snow’ satisfies the predicate ‘is white’ are will depend on whether we opt for realist or anti-realist theories. The realist option will simply look for the conditions under which the stuff snow bears the property of whiteness; the anti-realist option will look to the conditions under which it can be verified, or asserted with warrant, that snow is white.

...

...deflationists cannot really hold a truth-conditional view of content at all. If they do, then they inter alia have a non-deflationary theory of truth, simply by linking truth value to truth conditions through the above biconditional. It is typical of thoroughgoing deflationist theories to present a non-truth-conditional theory of the contents of sentences: a non-truth-conditional account of what makes truth-bearers meaningful. We take it this is what is offered, for instance, by the use theory of propositions in Horwich (1990). It is certainly one of the leading ideas of Field (1986; 1994), which explore how a conceptual role account of content would ground a deflationist view of truth. Once one has a non-truth-conditional account of content, it is then possible to add a deflationist truth predicate, and use this to give purely deflationist statements of truth conditions. But the starting point must be a non-truth-conditional view of what makes truth-bearers meaningful.

Both deflationists and anti-realists start with something other than correspondence truth conditions. But whereas an anti-realist will propose a different theory of truth conditions, a deflationists will start with an account of content which is not a theory of truth conditions at all. The deflationist will then propose that the truth predicate, given by the Tarski biconditionals, is an additional device, not for understanding content, but for disquotation. It is a useful device, as we discussed in section 5.3, but it has nothing to do with content. To a deflationist, the meaningfulness of truth-bearers has nothing to do with truth. — SEP article on Truth

EDIT: I think I understand the difference now, although I find the deflationary theory lacks the connection with (or "content" of) the world that I normally associate with the use of the word "truth".

Is there any theory or explanation as to how truth conditions make a sentence true, or as to how truth conditions are met?
— Luke

What is "make" doing here? You said it's not causal. — Banno

Possibly the same thing it's doing in your quote from Davidson, where he refers to "the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false". I don't think he's using it to mean anything causal. Or is he?

We have the logical relation of the IFF in the T-sentence- what more do you want? — Banno

I'm asking how we know when truth conditions are met. I'm also asking how this differs from the correspondence theory.

Which one of these are you proposing? Which is true? — Banno

None of these. As I mentioned earlier, my use of the term "truthmaker" did not have the truthmaker theory in view. As far as I can tell, the problem with the truthmaker theory (given in the SEP article) is that it's all about existence; the existence of things, which makes a sentence true. I don't want to restrict whatever makes a sentence true, or whatever leads us to judge a sentence as true (or false), only to existents. If I'm wrong, and truthmakers are not restricted to existents, then I'm unsure how they differ from truth conditions.

Take a true T-sentence, where "p" is some proposition and q gives its truth conditions, — Banno

Since you mentioned it, I can see now that this concept is closer to what I was going for. However, as I mentioned earlier wrt deflationism, I find truth conditions are not inconsistent with the correspondence theory in terms of how they make a sentence true. Is there any theory or explanation as to how truth conditions make a sentence true, or as to how truth conditions are met?

I have variously referred to “reasons for why we say that a statement is true or false” which Isaac took issue with; “what makes a statement true or false”; “what determines the truth or falsity of a statement”; “the criteria by which we judge a statement to be true or false” and possibly more in an attempt to get my point across. I was never committed or meant to imply a causal role -even though our judgements might be said to cause a statement to be true, at a stretch. Do you now acknowledge that our statements have truthmakers?

A statement's being judged true or false is very different to it's being true or false. — Banno

Are you talking about the world in itself? I could be wrong, but I think that’s different to @Pie’s post-Kantian views on the topic.

Also, what you quoted from Davidson earlier also refers to the world making our sentences true or false:

And it seems to me that this is what Davidson is saying in suggesting we give up our dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality: that there is no such separation between our true statements and the way things are. We “reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false". — Banno

What I'm positing is that the way of phrasing the issue in terms of making or determining is what is flawed. — Banno

I assume there is some criteria by which we judge a statement to be either true or false. You agree that this criteria is not the statement itself. Are you saying that there are no criteria; that this is a flawed assumption? Then do we judge truth/falsity at random, or not at all?

One feels like saying that "what makes the statement true is..." And here one wants to finish with "the statement itself", but that is wrong; — Banno

Why do you say that’s wrong? This is what I have been guarding against from the beginning. If it were the statement itself that makes a statement true, then there could be no false statements; every statement would be true by virtue of being a statement. If - as you say - this is wrong, then it cannot be that nothing makes a statement true. So if it’s not the way the world is (correspondence/realism) that makes a statement true, then what (antirealist thing) makes a statement true?

I never could see much of use in the notion of truthmakers. Can either of you explain what they are for? — Banno

I’m not sure whether I’m using the term in accordance with truthmaker theory; I used it only as an expedient for “that which determines whether a statement is true or false”. A quick search seems to indicate this use is pretty much the same as the truthmaker theory.

For isn't this just a complicated way of saying that P is the truthmaker of 'P' ? But nothing is actually being added. No truth is being made. P is just (taken as) true. — Pie

I’d just like to maintain some separation between the way things are in the world and our statements about the way things are in the world, because we might consider some of those statements to be false. It may be redundant whether we say either “P” or “P is true” (iff “P” is true), but it is not redundant to distinguish between P and “P”.

Fair enough. But what's a truthmaker for 'there are plums in the icebox'? Are you tempted to say something like...there being plums in the icebox? — Pie

Of course. It could be false.

I don’t deny that it’s already conceptual. I just don’t see how it follows that there are no truthmakers or that the correspondence theory of truth is defeated.

You could also check the icebox for plums. I later started speaking about ‘our’ reasons for saying that a statement is true or false.

Reasons we'd use to decide?

Look in the fridge? — Isaac

Yes, look in the fridge and see if the statement about the plums corresponds with what we find in there.

Ask someone we trust? — Isaac

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

The broader idea is that we can say much more about warrant than truth. We know that warranted statements can be false and that unwarranted statements can be true. The utility of 'true' may depend on the absoluteness of its grammar. — Pie

Is this in reference to Gettier examples? There is still some reason why we would ultimately say that the statements are true or false, and it still looks correspondence-y to me.

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

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

No, you seem to have lost track of the discussion. We were talking about the reasons why we would say that a statement is true or false, not how to best express that a statement is true or false. Your reasons were “to do with wanting to get others to believe us, wanting to show faith in others, wanting to give an indication of confidence...” I suggested a better reason for why we would say that a statement is true or false would be e.g. the (lack of) correspondence between the statement “there are plums in the icebox” and what we find in the icebox.