The Deflationary Theory of Truth - The deflationary theory has gone by many different names, including at least the following: the redundancy theory, the disappearance theory, the no-truth theory, the disquotational theory, and the minimalist theory. And it's not skepticism, as the redundancy theorist can happily accept that it is true that it is raining – which is just a redundant way of saying that they accept that it is raining. — Michael

Oh heck. I need to add Ayer and Quine to my formal statement of truth. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE REFERNECE; Dammit )

so the conscious is aware but the conscious is unware of the awareness.

I was just laughing because it sounded funny to me. Thanks for the explanation. I'll try to make a song about it )

oh. So you are saying unconscious is aware, but the self is not self aware of the awareness? lol

Stuff you don't have to think about, and stuff you have no access to is not 'the' unconscious of Freud. He is talking about a division of awareness — unenlightened

I would be interested where you got that idea. The Freudian trichotomy is usually considered divisions of the 'self,' with the ego being the only part of which that the self can be aware, and superego and id being unconscious.

But, why is it that crime is so low in other places in the world if every young person is feeling inclined at some age to be 'rebellious'. Seems like an oversimplification being made here. — Question

That's really impossible to know, but it seems to me that people in different cultures do different things to express their rebellion, and different cultures have different values affecting the seriousness of different rebellious acts.. Bedouin teens sneak into other camps and steal sheep, usually, which is greatly frowned upon but not considered a crime.

condolences on your loss, and wishing you joy in your marriage.

There are some things worse than death, such as torture, and Jefferson regarded life in the prisons of the time to be of the same order. Which it was. So you have again returned to the same ugliness. We should instead be glad for the reformation ideas of Penn and Mill, which hadn't been implemented at that time.

As you speak of your right to dignity, I can only reply you have already offended mine with your continual insistence that I repeat answers on killing and worse. I made the mistake of thinking you actually could be polite and considerate of other people. Good bye again, this time for good.

No, I say that because this topic is about Hamilton vs. Jefferson, and assigned from one revisionist historian, it is generally accepted that Jefferson derived his theory of natural rights from Locke.

I think it makes perfect sense to say "I have a right to be treated with dignity" as much as it is to say "You should treat me with dignity." — Hanover

It makes perfect sense, but it has nothing to do with the USA's natural rights. The government has no authority to enforce good manners, except where it interferes with due process. So it is really nothing to do with this topic.

I think it's more appropriate to say we should or should not treat another person a certain way, rather than he/she has a "right" to be treated or not treated in a certain way. To say we have "rights" which are unenforceable, and may be flaunted at will--which are not, in other words, legal rights--makes little sense to me. — Ciceronianus the White

I think the reason it does not make sense to you is that the view you are approaching the issue from the wrong end of the stick. To quote from my above submission https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1287/on-the-practical-application-of-natural-rights#

If everyone can pursue happiness, Locke reasoned, then more people act for the greater good, resulting in betterment of society. That is the objective of positive law. It is not ‘positive law’ because rights are entitlements, rather than restrictions. It is positive law because its objective is to enable good....

....In practical applications, the correct approach is thus not "what rights do I have which the government may not take away?" That would be viewing rights as entitlements. The correct question is: "what authority must the government have to maximize everyone's rights?" That results in the greatest amount of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness; and hence the greatest prosperity and well being of all.

Yes. From the perspective of natural rights, the amount of authority the govenenment has for such issues depends on how much it can guarantee longer life and greater liberty, independent of how much society would increase life and liberty by itself. For health care, the government definitely has the authority to require emergency rooms to handle patients who would otherwise die, or suffer severe impairment, even if they have no health insurance. But on universal healthcare, it can't provide an absolute answer, and the federal government has been right to delegate many of those decisions to the states.

Similarly, if a business is polluting a water supply which others drink, the government definitely has the authority to require it to clean it up and compensate hurt people.

On global warming, it does remain less definite, because other things such as sunspots could cause a mini ice age, so it is not possible to predict whether human activity really will raise temperature with definity. But it remains undeniable that human activity is increasing global temperature, so from the perspective of human rights, the government has at least some authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and society should really be investing far greater resources in determining the amount that human activity is raising temperature, in particular, by deploying more deep ocean buoy sensors to determine the amount of heat stored there.

2. Language qua language is descriptive only. By language, here, I mean meaningful sentences (MSs) of the general form S is P. For an MS to be true, it must accurately describe some aspect of reality, that is, be descriptive of a thing. Because no description can be perfectly accurate, no MS can be completely and absolutely true. And any MS can only be as true as the description is accurate. — tim wood

That's Russell's view, and the foundation of almost all modern thought. And as Russell says, it resolves how to handle statements like 'the king of France is bald,' so its certainly useful. The standard objection is that some words don't describe some aspect of reality, for example 'unicorn.'

I realized the reason you have some differences of opinion is that I did not include Tarski. Some methemeticians stated he really should not be left out. So I added a little to the semantics section to allow for theories of classical and modern realism. Also I added a little on ideas of intent influencing causality, as quite a few people raised issues on that; and clarified why causal truth can only be known not to be false by adding Aristotle's law of excluded middle. Beyond that, if I add anything, I would have to remove something else, because it has rather reached a length limit.

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There’s been much discussion about ‘fake news’ recently, resulting rise to a new interest in the definition of truth. In modern philosophy, truth is defined by formal logic upon propositions (statements). There are three basic kinds of truth evaluation, which I here attempt to express in way compatible with the thinking of the modern philosophers Russell, Whitehead, Moore, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Carnap, Strawson, Putnam, Searle, Mendelson, Kripke, Popper, Kuhn, and Davidson.

• Tautological truths within formal systems, such as mathematical equations. These are established by syntactic consistency with core axioms. The core axioms themselves describe the formal systems, and so truths at this level are necessarily true, in accordance with syntactic rules which are themselves defined in formally as logical propositions. These propositional systems can also define rules of deduction and inference without introducing meaningfulness and causality. While the truth evaluation itself requires some semantic definition of ‘truth,’ in order for the proposition to be assessed, the process of evaluating the proposition’s truth value always requires syntactic analysis alone.
• Empirical truths, which are determined via ratification by observation of material objects, states and events, as long as the propositions describing material states and events are logically coherent. If the observation verifies the proposition, then the RESULT of the observation is factually true, but the proposition itself without empirical ratification remains a proposition that is neither true nor false, and is simply an assertion. The specific and exact nature of truth itself depends not only on facts or data, but also on the epistemological factors relating the proposition to the material world in different metaphysical systems, most predominantly in the theories that define the relation of subject and predicate to objects, states, and events in the physical world. These theories add semantics (the meanings of words) to the syntactic relationships described in first-order logic. 'Internal' states, resulting from consciousness, are also evaluated empirically. The nature of consciousness itself is part of the epistemology.
• Causal truths, which again first must be generally consistent within the rules of propositional calculus, and additionally, they must not contain any syntactic fallacies of deduction or inference. These are the most complicated forms of truth, and the basis of science. They are the most complicated because they involve both syntax, semantics, and additional rules. In particular, causal relationships cannot ever be proven necessarily true. They can only be proven not to be false. That is important because, in proposition logic, Aristotle’s law of excluded middle holds that any statement is either true or false; but in real-world language, there need be no excluded middle, hence, proving that a statement is not false does not imply that it is necessarily true. Metaphysical factors also influence the relation of the subject and predicate's in the cause, to the subject and predicate of the result.

Compound, Contractual, and Scientific Truth

While these are the *basic* forms of truth, the truth of many statements rely on combining two or more these forms together. For example, most commonly believe they know that the sun will rise tomorrow. This is based on empirical observations of many prior days where the sun did rise, leading to the simple second-order deduction that it will rise again tomorrow. Logically, one cannot know whether the belief is true that the sun will rise tomorrow until after the event has occurred. But in most cases, when sufficient empirical validation of many prior similar events has occurred, it is loosely assumed true that the same future event will occur again in the same circumstance. This 'axiom of probabilistic certainty' is the foundation of prediction in much scientific theory. The extrapolation of this axiom is the creation of the scientific method, which is designed to define the minimum number of observations necessary to corroborate a theory. As per the rules for causal truth, theories can only be corroborated and not be proven true; but modern science theory might still call a theory true based on the axiom of probabilistic certainty.

Beyond that, there are some other very specific forms of truth in philosophy. For example, there are 'self-generating' truths in linguistics, such as promises, statements of intent, contracts, and some statements of belief, which all become existent by their own statement. One should be aware these kinds of truth have limitations. For example, after making promises, it becomes true that promises were made, but the truth of the promise itself remains an indirect proposition, and still must be determined within the rules for the three basic forms of truth described above.

Truth in theology, morality, ethics, law, and metaphysics

Much confusion about truth has arisen in these fields, but by the above schema, the nature of truth itself is relatively simple. Theological systems make assertions about that which cannot ultimately be proven; morality strives to define that which is good or bad for an individual; ethics defines that which is good or bad for a society; law strives to define that which is right or wrong; and metaphysics strives to define that which is real. In all these cases the absolute truth of the assertions they make is undefinable. However within each of these disciplines, it is possible to evaluate the propositional consistency of statements within formal systems that they define; and from that, to evaluate the truth of their propositions empirically, within the formal systems themselves. so again, when different propositions within, or across, these disciplines contradict each other, it is not possible to evaluate which are true or false in absolute terms. It is only possible to demonstrate whether the claims by each system are coherent.

The Semantics of Truth

According to all modern logicians, truth is the result of evaluating a proposition, but the relation between truth and the proposition itself can be different depending on epistemological considerations. While one might initially believe the nature of truth to be intuitively obvious, the semantics of truth are complex. This starts with the issue as to whether one believes that tautological propositions are true before any person evaluates them; in which case, the truths must exist independently in some abstract space independent of material reality.

That introduces the metaphysical considerations. Classical realists hold that Platonic ‘ideas’ do exist independent of perception, and truth is simply known by correlation. Modern realists state only external material reality exists, and abstractions are simply known by common sense (as a result, many modern philosophers refer to classical realism as idealism). Dualists hold that there separate domains of physical materiality and conceptual ideas, both of which exist, and some hold tautologies are a priori true (are still truth regardless whether they are considered). Monists hold the known reality is only physical, or only exists in the mind, or something else (such as Wittgenstein's idea of logical positivism, which holds that language is the only thing which can be absolutely known). Such different perspectives change what is actually known when a truth is ‘discovered.’

Regardless whether truth does exist independently of physical reality, a priori or not, empirical and causal truths may be properties attached to the proposition which are not ‘discovered,’ but rather ‘assessed.’ These latter cases introduce the meaningfulness of incorrect assessments, and how exactly something can be meaningful if its truth is beyond simple binary evaluation, such as for example, propositions which refer to non-existent objects or which contain metaphors. Thus the semantics of truth are not so simple, and become involved with metaphysical decisions defining the nature of reality, meaningfulness, and the definition of knowledge itself.

There are also three separate positions on causality. Some hold that there is no causality without intent, and that it is otherwise simply a logical inference or deduction. The second main position is that intent does not really exist either, but is only an apparent phenomena created by the physical workings of the world. The third main group say one or both of those ideas are reductionist, and so do not give any meaning to the word 'because.' The different positions on intent may also influence truth evaluation of empirical observations on internal states, such as emotions.

Truth and Post Truth

One of the most advanced thinkers on the semantics of truth is Donald Davidson, who is an absolute anomalous monist (there are only ideas, or mind, or matter, or language, but it cannot be known which). Therefore, he states truth is ultimately undefinable, yet through our ability to reason meaningfully, truth can be known, even if people do not know that they know the truth.

For example, people can know that the sun will rise tomorrow; but they do not know that they knew that until after the sun has risen.

Rhetorical misconceptions have arisen from this, whereby people state what they wish to be true as being true, then strive to find facts to prove that truth afterwards, giving rise to the ‘post-truth era.’ While one might attempt to dismiss such efforts as obviously absurd, it is not so easy, because of the complexities of formal definitions of what truth actually is. As things are, we are likely to be stuck with this problem for a very long time, because the framework of formal truth described here, with the resulting complex nature of truth in science, is far beyond that which most people who ‘just want to know the truth’ are ready to learn

But what I'm asking is how is it meaningful to say that they have these, and why is the unconscious and conscious a "continuum" anymore than a body and mind is a "continuum?" — Marty

Ah, well according to Jung it is meaningful, but not to the individual. As well as the 'universal' there is the 'collective,' which can refer to groups. So for example, many have commented that when a plane slammed into the WTC, there was a collective desire to invade Iraq for no rational reason whatsoever.

But it isnt meaningful to the individual, because the individual cannot know what is in their own unconscious, rather than someone else's, even after discovering a shadow. A good example is nervous habits such as scratching the head or whatever. If a person is unaware of it entirely, sometimes these are mimics of other people they admire, and sometimes it is an unconscious behavior resulting from an individual's own internal state, but there is no way of knowing which.

Jung believes these kinds of things are a continuum, because we are continually acquiring them from the universal, and continually modifying our own persona, either by shoving new things into the shadow, or by pulling them out. But once we individualize any particular behavior into the persona, it doesn't go back into the shadow again, so the persona is continually growing. the things we shove into the shadow are new things that the persona rejects.

Certainly the most positive attitude on the part of a disabled person is, "There's nothing the able-bodied can do that I cant", but nonetheless such an attitude towards realising potential in the face of diffulty, no matter how admirable, cannot fully reconcile the nihilism of extreme inequity. — Robert Lockhart

That brings to mind a time when my father asked the author Ved Mehta out for dinner. We went to a very large and noisy restaurant. Suddenly he burst out laughing. My father, a little offended, asked him what was so funny. He pointed at a table about 60 feet away and said "he just told a really funny joke." We, not being blind like him, could hardly make out the conversation at the table right next to us )

Truth may be the result of evaluation, but back at logic, that would be quite different from validity. One can make a valid argument and end with up with false conclusions; to be valid and true, you need soundness, the successful transmission of the truth-value you hope you started with. — mcdoodle

Thank you, I think that's a good correction.

In the Republic at least, Plato was an opponent of democracy which he believed was rule-by-the-rabble. What he wanted to do was restore the older oligarchical idea of rule by an aristocracy, except this time not a warrior-aristocracy but an aristocracy of intellectual merit (defined in his rather transcendent terms, of course). — yazata

I think that's very well said )

According to some, but not to others:

http://www.pacifica.edu/degree-programs/ma-phd-jungian-archetypal-studies

It was a much better course than I expected.

There have been people who would say humans should be looked at in the same way we look at sheep. Medicine provides artificial robustness. Take away the medicine and nature would reveal the hidden weakness, devastating human populations in the process. — Mongrel

Well as you may have seen, I think about natural rights a lot, specifically with reference to the USA. So the answer in the US, according to Jeffersonian natural rights, is that anything which increases life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness increases the amount that people can act for the greater good, and the more people can act for the greater good, the more society can be of benefit to all its participants. A government only has authority to act in ways to prevent deprivation of natural rights, and the government's control has to be based on immutable inalienability. As a consequence it has no authority to act on hypothetical 'weakness,' but if a 'weakness' is empirically demonstrated to result in reduction in life, then it has absolute authority to do so.

The person who has a neurotic issues such as undesirable compulsions, may not understand why they are compelled to act the way they act. — Cavacava

Well that's a good start. When you speak of 'issues' you are really more speaking of the medical definition, and medically speaking, people with psychoses are also compelled to act 'undesirably,' From the medical perspective, 'undersitable' refers to actions which hurt the individual or others. If they don't hurt the individual or others, then the compulsions are considered harmless, and therefore not 'undesirable.' That applies to both neuroses and psychoses, with the simple distinction that neurotics don't have an 'undesirable' metaphysical belief, whereas psychotics cannot 'oerceive reality as it is.' So for example, one might have the belief that one was abducted by aliens, but if it causes no harm to the individual or others, then it is not considered psychotic. But if the belief does cause harm, then it IS considered psychotic. The point of the medical definition is that avoids issues with philosophical reality of beliefs, and whether consequential actions should be considered rational, or not. .

At the undergraduate level, you are right, but there is also a reason for that. Jungians hold that people cannot really understand Jung properly until they are sufficiently individuated to accept the theory without introducing their own unconscious bias, and they state, hermeneutically, that does not occur until after middle age, and any possible middle age crisis. So they don't want to teach it at lower levels.

Oh, I should add, of course Freud also uses the word 'unconscious,' but Freud was not particularly concerned with the philosophy of mind, and whether it can be known that something in the unconscious is part of the personal unconscious, or part of the universal unconscious. It was up to Jung to point that out later.

I think you mean to refer to 'subconscious states' really. Unconscious desires definitely exist in Jungian theory, which talks about the 'universal unconscious' and 'individual unconscious;' rather than the 'subconscious' you are describing. According to the Jungian theory, there are two main aspects of the individual: the mask, or persona (roughly equivalent to the ego in Freudian thought) and the shadow, or unconscious (roughly equivalent to the id). The acts of individuation, by each person, reinforces their individual personae. However, the stronger the persona, the more cognitive dissonance it creates with unresolved paradoxes, which the individual shoves down into the individual unconscious, or bag. But the problem is, no persona has any direct way of knowing what is in their own bag, and what is in someone else's; so the gross effect is the creation of a shared pool of unknown consciousness, thus referred to as universal.

The point of the theory is that an individual cannot see into their own bag, but can access the universal unconscious. That's why it is called unconsciousness, rather than subconsciousness, because scientifically, there is no way for any one person to know what in the unconscious is their own, and what is someone else's. And the reason for the theory is that the bag is the source of tension in the persona, which manifests as anger and frustration, or even psychosis.

Jungian therapy can enable the person to discover what is in their own bag by recognizing the anger and frustration attributed to others, usually via dream states, and thus pull knowledge of the universal unconscious into their own persona by deepening its reach into the shadow. That eliminates the cognitive conflict, reducing anger, frustration, and psychosis. .

Well, that is the first kind word out of you )

I have completed draft of the topic https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1287/on-the-practical-application-of-natural-rights#

This will be my second article submission on the philosophy forum. My first, on 'formal logic in the post-truth era' has already been accepted and is undergoing minor copy editing.

As I see it, if I spend 8 hours editing down what I write so that it is easier to read for everone, that is of far greater utility than spending 8 hours repeating the same things, which less attention to detail, for you. And the section at the top, which answers your issue, is now only 500 words instead of 2,000. but as you now resorted to ad hominem, I now know you are really no more than a bully, so don't expect anything else from me specifically for you.

Well the problem you place to me is that your confusion is so fundamental, I would have to write another 2,000 words to answer it. So I already wrote it for you as succinctly as I can.

'Fairness' is not the objective of natural rights at all. You will find the explanation of that at the beginning of my summary on this thread at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1287/on-the-practical-application-of-natural-rights

What I have done so far, as the debate has gotten rather lengthy, is put together a shorter response which formulates the answer properly, and posted it as a separate thread here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1287/on-the-practical-application-of-natural-rights

And thank you for the conversation. I can't find anything further from what you say that requires any alteration of my summation, so it appears we would be at cross purposes to continue the dialog, and I hope you find out whatever it is you are trying to learn.

And of course, for not being able to define truth in morality, there is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._E._Moore#Good_as_indefinable

and for the formal statement of ethical truth within an ethical system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_ethics

I think you are confused about my shorthand use of 'truth' for 'truth evaluation.' It is fairly common shorthand, and I did consider writing it out more fully, but it makes it more difficult to read, and people who are not trying to say it is wrong have no problem with it, so I am not changing it. However, you may find it useful to consider how propositions EVALUATE to truth, and that there is no other way to state a truth than with a proposition.

If you want to understand the different approaches to truth evaluation, and why I state them separately, then you will also find that the need for semantics in the first kind of truth is summarized here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth#Formal_theories

for the first category, the formal description on the Wikipedia starts here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic

For the second kind, which as I say is based on the first kind, but which introduces the need for empirical verification, starts here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_descriptions

And for the third kind, which adds the idea of causality, the formal description starts here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality#Causal_calculus

For the basis of defining promises: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/promises/#ScaExpThe

And for the acceptance of scientific theories as truths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

What I suggest is that you look at the description of logical equivalence on the Wikipedia, and what you will find is that I restated the last sentence of the first paragraph in response to your question.

I'm sorry, you are right, I was trying to say something too quickly. But I am having a problem that this forum does not support logical symbols, and frankly, I am not really sure what your real problem is, and so I am not sure that I can provide an answer. What I tried to do was explain the definition of truth in modern logic. It appears to me you have some motivation not to accept the reasoning, and ultimately, you will not be satisfied with any explanation I try to provide.

Because two to the base ten, and ten to the base two are logically equivalent, but they are not identical.

Also I should explain about knowledge of truth in an indefinite manner, as per Davidson. Davidson's view on the statement 'I know the sun will rise tomorrow" is that it is true. However, you can only know that you knew it after the sun rises the following day. That is, Davidson believes you can know the truth, but not necessarily know that you know it, if empirical verification is not immediately available.

Those assertions are not an example of logical equivalence, as per my first and second basic definitions. That is an example of two empirical statements, because they require testing against the material world in order to determine their truth. An example of logical equivalence would be "10 in base two is equivalent to 2 in base 10.".

the thinking is, if you state that a is logically equivalent to b, then the statement is considered true. However, the 'truth' which one considers is a semantic evaluation, not a property of the syntactic system itself, and so 'truth' is not redundant, but somehow associated with the statement.

I don't understand the relevance of that. Davidson does say that truth is undefined, but only because he is an anomalous absolute monist, and therefore, in his view, it is not possible to know, absolutely, whether truth exists a priori or not. But then he goes on to say some very complicated things about meaning as the consequence of which, truth can be known, but from an absolute perspectiive, only in an indefinite manner.

Well that is the naturalistic view, which is that truth exists inherently as an intrinsic part of the proposition. if you believe that, then a proposition has a truth value regardless whether anyone thinks of it, and you end up having to postulate the existence of 'a priori' truth in the Kantian sense, and some people object to that.

Now I am remembering, it was a very long time ago, and I did hear the question asked why a truth value should be related to a syntactic proposition at all, and so why there should be any debate on the epistemology at all. The answer is that the purpose of modern logic is to make statements meaningful.

If you remove truth values from propositional logic, then you can create a simpler reductionist system in which statements about the truth of propositions are meaningless. But then the explanation of meaningfulness is also incomplete, and so such methods are of less merit.