I think that the sleight-of-hand here is in the whole assumption of pragmatism - namely, the idea that the ultimate test of something's validity is whether or not it's useful. — Pneumenon

I think this overlooks an important difference. In another related paper, Haugeland explicitly disowns the label of "pragmatism". His account is meant to vindicate the notions of truth and objectivity in opposition with the pragmatism of Rorty that seeks to dispense entirely with both. But, at the same time, philosophers like Putnam and David Wiggins have endorsed pragmatism in a way that is consistent with Haugeland's efforts. His account also is sharply contrasted with Quine's pragmatic/holistic empiricism. Brandom and Davidson also want to recover objectivity within their own inferentialist and coherentist accounts, respectively, but while the latter struggles with the concept of empirical experience, the former seeks to dispense with it entirely. Haugeland offers a account of experience as the exercise of recognitional abilities that are constituted as such inseparably from the (understanding of) the constitutive standards that govern the objets thus recognized and that make them intelligible.

(Above edited to switch "former" and "latter".)

Haugeland is saying, I think, that a pattern exists when there is a set of rules that govern what something should do, and how we're supposed to respond when it does (or doesn't) do what it's supposed to do. We follow these rules by responding the way we're supposed to. — Pneumenon

There is one (possibly two) distinction that Haugeland makes and that you possibly missed, and another one that is merely implicit in Haugeland's discussion, and that he makes more explicitly in a subsequent paper: (Truth and Rule Following).

The first (explicit) distinction to be made distinguishes two levels of patterns exemplified, respectively, in the constitutive standards that objects obey, and, secondly, in the objects themselves. For instance, to recognize something as a bishop in the game of chess is to recognize it as the object that it is, and to recognize that bishops, in the general case, only move along diagonals, corresponds to the recognition of (or insistence on, or institution of) a higher level pattern -- i.e. the existence of a constitutive standard.

The merely implicit distinction alluded to above is that between two sorts or "rule-following". When the objects (lower level patterns) obey the objective standards, they -- the objects themselves -- are "behaving" in accordance with rules, we may say. But our recognizing them the be the objects that they are, on the one hand, and our recognizing that they accord with the constitutive standards, on the other hand, both depend on our correctly exercising perceptual abilities, and hence, our correctly following rules. (More comments on that later, in a followup post).

Those distinctions become apparent when (and make it possible that) the objects that we perceive appear not to behave in accordance with the constitutive standards of the domains that they belong to. Those distinctions are reflected in the different ways in which we can be mistaken and the different ways in which, accordingly, we attempt to correct those mistakes. One source of error consists in our having misidentified an object (e.g. we thought it was a bishop when, in actuality, it was a rook). Another source of error occurs when we are mistaken about some constitutive standard. The second case, however, splits into two sub-cases. When an object has been correctly identified (as a bishop, say) and then seems to have moved in a way that doesn't accord with a constitutive standard, this could be because we have incorrectly judged it (in experience) to violate this constitutive standard, or we are mistaken about this standard being empirically valid. (For the standard to be empirically valid, here, isn't meant to be inconsistent with its being brought to bear to experience a priori. For more on that, see my two posts above about synthetic a priori propositions.)

This last distinction can be illustrated with numerous cases of apparent falsification of scientific theories when, historically, the theory was actually, and correctly, saved from falsification through the adjonction of an auxiliary hypothesis. Oftentimes, the ad hoc (so called) hypothesis was later empirically confirmed independently. One classical example is that of Uranus that was seen not to precisely follow the orbit prescribed by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. Inasmuch as Le Verrier was justified to postulate the existence of another planet that had precisely the mass and orbit of Neptune, in order to explain this anomaly, then the apparent discrepancy exemplified an error in our bringing to bear the constitutive standards of Newtonian mechanics to the behavior of Uranus. But it sometimes also turns out (as it later came to be the case with the anomaly in the orbit of Mercury) that the standards themselves have to be adjusted or relinquished.

This brings me back to your claim quoted above regarding what it is that the rules say regarding what we are supposed to do when objects don't behave (or don't appear to behave) in the way they should. It is quite important to Haugeland that no rule dictates what it is that we should do in such circumstances. That is a matter of adjusting our knowledge of (objects in) the world with our understanding of (the constitutive standards of) the world. The adjustment is mutual, and, in some cases, the former may be at fault, and in other cases the latter may be at fault. But there is no general rule for deciding which. There only possibly could exist such a rule if empiricism were true, and the objects (lower level "patterns") could be singled out in experience independently of the standards that govern their behaviors. But Haugeland's insistance that the higher level patterns always are disclosed as constitutive standards for the objects that can populate some empirical domain precludes the very possibility of such an independent identification of objects as correlates of "raw" experience.

I only am acquainted with two works on the topic. Yuval Dolev, Time and Realism: Metaphysical and Antimetaphysical Perspectives, MIT Press, 2007, is fascinating but it's been a while since I've read (most of) it only once, and I can't therefore vouch for it unreservedly. It got me thinking about the thickness of the present (i.e. the idea that the "present time" always has a contextually defined finite temporal extension -- an idea that meshes well with ideas regarding embodied cognition), among other things.

The second work only is tangentially related to the "philosophy of time", proper. It is Sebastian Rödl's Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect, HUP 2012 (originally published as Kategorien des Zeitlichen in 2005). This one is a momentous and a stunning achievement. I am currently going through my third reading. But it's not so much about time as a topic, but rather more about transcendental logic -- the study of temporality (tense, aspect, and generic thought) as a system of forms that characterizes out thoughts as they relate essentially to experience. It does, of course, have profound implications about the nature of time, but also about epistemology, the metaphysics of propositions (i.e. Fregean thoughts), and a variety of other topics.

I've been so busy with work lately, and now I'm a bit burned out, so...I'll have to return to it when I can. — John

No worry, and no hurry. The end of this month isn't a deadline either. The discussion about Brassier's paper spilled over the next couple months and there are outstanding issues there too (such as the "argument from ancestrality".)

And to assert this wrongness does seem to commit one to the idea that truth is not a property of statements but of the propositions that are expressed by them and also to the idea that there must be, in some unimaginable way, unexpressed propositions. Then this begins to look like a form of Platonism. — John

Yes, this raises issues regarding the ontological status of propositions (Fregean thoughts). But maybe this is a topic for another thread; or possibly suited for the now dormant Pattern and Being thread ;-) (Hint: a proposition can be regarded as, in a sense, a possible pattern -- i.e. a possible way for our world to be -- while a true proposition would be grasped when one objectively refers to an actual pattern -- i.e. a way our world can intelligibly be thought to be, and, indeed, is. Also, in the previous sentence I have used "to be" and "is" tenselessly. Our world being different in the past makes a difference to how it "is" in that sense)

And you replied that you did not mean to imply that "dinosaurs roam the earth" was not true at the time. This seems to contradict your earlier statement that you agreed with Michael, so now I am confused as to what you do beleive. — John

That's because I understand "...is true" as predicated of a statement to be tenseless. The statement at issue is the statement expressed by us, in the present, with the use of the mentioned sentence. Statements that are true at one time are true at all times. This is more apparent in the case of so called eternal truths, such as mathematical truths, but is also true of temporal truths (i.e. truths that pertain to something being in a definite state at some definite time). The latter is somewhat hidden by the fact that we represent statements with the sentences used to express them. For instance, if Smokey the cat is on the mat right now, the sentence used by me in the future to express this very same fact (which concerns what's up with Smokey right now) will be different. This sentence will use a past tense.

So, when someone claims that "dinosaurs roam the earth" was not true at the time, one may mean that the present tense sentence "dinosaurs roam the earth" would not have expressed a truth if it had been used by an English speaker in the distant past. It could also mean that the statement made by us through using that sentence right now doesn't truly ascribe a property to the Earth that it would have exemplified in the distant past. (It doesn't really matter if you hold either "... roam the earth" or "dinosaurs roam ..." to be the predicate). But on that second interpretation, the sentence is understood as an open sentence that includes a time variable. Saying then, now, that it "was true at the time", is meant to fill up the time variable in the mentioned sentence in order to express with it a definite statement (expressing a timeless truth) that is then properly evaluated true, and tenselessly so.

It is the second interpretation that I favor, since it is how the T-schema, and disquotational schema, are meant to be understood, with the mentioned sentence held to express a definite statement (i.e. a definite Fregean though) rather than as an open statement (i.e. a Fregean concept) that is predicated of a time.

So, I am agreeing with Michael that the disquotational schema, or the T-schema, are valid even as they refers to past circumstances before any human language was in use. But I disagree about the interpretation of the schema often incorrectly foisted on it, possibly by Micheal, but also by other participants in this thread too. And this is not just a matter of convention, but reflects are deeper philosophical point about the tenselesness of "...is true" as revealed by logical grammar, though somewhat hidden by English grammar.

No, not language users; language. Without language, there can be no sentence. If there can be no sentence, then there can be no true sentence. Yet, at that time, it would be the case that the universe exists (but not that "the universe exists" is true). — Sapientia

On edit: If you will bear with me, I will make my main point more explicitly in the last paragraph below, also added on edit.

The statement '"Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true' (if you allow me to stick with this example) isn't qualified by a time. It is a statement that we are making right now. It doesn't really make sense to ponder over what change it would make to the truth value of this statement if we were to evaluate it as it would have been made at a different time. Likewise, if the English statement "Smokey the cat is one the mat" is true, then it doesn't really make sense either to inquire about its truth value if the statement itself had been made by me three feet further on the left. Likewise with 'moving' the expression of this statement three hours or three billion years in the past.

One difficulty that seemingly arises is due the the tense of the verb that occurs in the sentence used to make the statement. This tense seems to make the statement dependent on the time when it is made in order to determine what strate of affairs it is describing. But this is an illusion that stems from confusing (1) the situational sentence used with (2) the statement made with the use of this situational sentence, as I had earlier suggested.

If I say right now that I am at home, and I am thereby making a statement that is true, my statement remains true in the future when I am not at home anymore. I could then re-express the same statement, if I wanted to, with the use of a different situational sentence that included a past tense verb. Those difficulties usually are glossed over in discussions of the T-schema through assuming that the truths being evaluated are eternal rather than temporal (e.g. we assume that Smokey always has been on the mat or never was). But if we are to make the account more general, we have to interpret all the indexical words and verb tenses of the mentioned sentence relative to its intended circumstance of expression in order to determine the statement being made, and hold this statement fixed while considering the range of circumstances relative to which its truth value is evaluated.

On edit: The range of circumstances just mentioned, relative to which the truth value of the statement are evaluated -- and, indirectly, the truth value of the sentence used by us to make this statement -- includes past, future, and counterfactual circumstances where we weren't yet around, aren't around anymore, or never were around, respectively.

They are ruled out because of the biconditional. Which is why it's also problematic to remove the biconditional and replace it with a material conditional. I don't want to allow the logical possibility of inappropriate truth conditions:

"P" is true if Q.

"The cat is on the mat" is true if the dog is on the bed. — Sapientia

I don't understand this. This last statement can't be derived from the disquotational shema where it is assumed that the mentioned sentence belongs to the same language as the language in which the truth conditions are stated. I think part of the confusion comes from your considering the mentioned sentence as a free standing material object, or uninterpreted syntactical object, such as an inscription on a billboard, that is envisioned to have different conventional meanings relative to the circumstances where it is being employed (e.g. in different cities where different languages are spoken). But the sentence being evaluated (and mentioned) rather always is the sentence used by us, in the present, and in English, in order to describe what is or would be the case in a variety of possible circumstances.

If there is no language. — Sapientia

There being language users in the vicinity is not a feature of the circumstances that has any relevance to evaluating whether the English sentence "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true when Smokey the cat indeed is on the mat in those circumstances. We can imagine some circumstance in the distant past, in the distant future, or in a distant galaxy far away, when, or where, there are no language users around. If, in those actual or counterfactual circumstances, Smokey the cat is (was, or will be) on the mat, then the English sentence "Smokey the cat is (was, or will be) on the mat" as used by us now to describe what is (was, will be, or would have been) the case in to those actual or counterfactual circumstances is true.

So, you are free to interpret the biconditional form as the conjunction of two subjunctive conditionals, or as the statement of a material equivalence. — Pierre-Normand

Sorry for quoting myself, but I want to add this precision:

The intended interpretation as a conjunction of subjunctive conditionals is equivalent to saying that, in whatever worldly circumstances you might find yourself, then, in those specific circumstances, the T-shema interpreted as a statement of material equivalence must be true. And this means that the truth value of the mentioned sentence must be ascribed to it accordingly.

For instance, if you were to find yourself in circumstances where Smokey the cat is on the mat, then for the following statement of material equivalence to hold in those circumstances,

(1) "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true iff Smokey the cat is on the mat

the truth value "true" must be ascribed to the sentence "Smokey the cat is on the mat" in order that it be properly interpreted and used as a statement in the object-language.

I think you are confusing the purpose of the biconditional. Do you mean it as a material equivalence, or something like, 'for any situation, if the thing on the left of the biconditional holds in that situation, then so does the thing on the right?' If you mean it as a material conditional, then only the current situation is relevant, making your claim trivially true, and at odds with the more grandiose claims you made at the beginning of this thread. — The Great Whatever

The way it is used in the literature on the philosophy of language and theories of truth, the disquotational shema always is meant to express a biconditional that holds over a range of possible worldly circumstances. It says of the mentioned sentence that it is properly evaluated as true in the object-language (i.e. it expresses a true statement with the use of the object-language) whenever, and only when, circumstances in the world are as described by the used sentence. So, you are free to interpret the biconditional form as the conjunction of two subjunctive conditionals, or as the statement of a material equivalence. You have to remember that the possible circumstances of evaluation range over ways the world might be (e.g. where Smokey the cat may or may not be on the mat) but hold fixed, and indeed uniquely determine, the semantic properties of object-language. (And that the meta-language also is held fixed ought to go without saying),

Michael and TGW,

This sort of ambiguity about the individuation condition for sentences of a language can be circumvented with the use of the word "statement" to refer to speech act forms -- i.e. expressions of determinate thoughts in language. In that way, "Snow is white", as used by English speakers and "La neige est blanche", as used by French speakers, make the same statement using two different sentences. Conversely, the same sentence can be used to make two different statements in two different languages. When Michael thus refers to an "English sentence", he is talking about the statement that is made when this sentence is used by English speakers.

There is likely a missing premise that you cannot articulate, — The Great Whatever

I think there indeed is an additional premise that Michael is successfully articulating but that you keep ignoring, for some reason. The additional premise is that the languages of the used sentence and of the mentioned sentence are the same. When this additional premise, which amounts to a range restriction on the identity of the languages relied on to understand the sentences, is provided, then Michael's biconditional is true. The only trouble that was apparent to me was his earlier reliance on this biconditional to support some contentious counterfactual conditionals about, e.g., rabbits and horses.

But I think that it is possible in certain circumstances that P and not "P" is true. — Sapientia

What circumstances would that be? Remember that philosophers who employ the disquotational schema (e.g. Tarskian truth theorists, disquotationalists, deflationists, minimalists, identity truth theorists, or prosentential truth theorists) all are using it in contexts where it is assumed that the truth conditions of the mentioned sentence are determined by means of the used sentence (on the right hand side of the biconditional). Hence, circumstances where its truth conditions would be different from the truth conditions of the used sentence are ruled out. So, it's rather like I were saying that if a natural number N is smaller than 3 then,

N is prime if and only if N = 2,

And you were to object that this biconditional is false because some natural numbers are prime other than 2.

I meant it in the sense that if we think of the cat being on the mat as the truth-condition that makes "the cat is on the mat" true, and if "the cat is on the mat" refers to the cat being on the mat, then "the cat is on the mat" refers to that truth-condition.

Maybe "truth-maker" or even just "referent" is the better term? Although I guess this is largely semantic and makes no significant difference to the issue at hand. — Michael

Yes, it's true that nothing much hangs on the use of "refers to" here. But "refers to" usually is understood as a relation between singular terms and the objects that they refer to, or between concept words and the Fregean concepts (or determinations) that they refer to. In the case of whole sentences, they are said by Frege to refer to truth values, and the thoughts that they express are their senses. Knowledge of the truth conditions of sentences would be equated with knowledge of the senses that they express. One can know the sense of a sentence and not know whether it is true or not. One needs in addition to know the references (Bedeutugnen) of the terms this sentence is composed of. When this is known, then the truth value can be assessed through checking what's up with those Bedeutungen in the world (e.g. does the object referred to by the singular term have the determination referred to by the concept word?). This is why Frege locates the truth value of the sentence at the level of reference, and the meaning of the sentence (its truth conditions) at the level of sense (Fregean Sinn).

Why? The "this" is self-referential. — Michael

It's unclear because it sounds like "this" is used to single out the language you are making claims about, not to specify the language in which you've decided to write your post, or part of your post, let alone the second part of one single sentence in your post. Also, there are less confusing ways to make your point about meaning being determined by use, it seems to me.

That's why I clarified the previous example by saying:

Given that in this language "horse" means "rabbit"... — Michael

That's not sufficient. You also have to say: "... and given that I've decided to write this post in this language..."

They reference the same truth condition. So in that sense they mean the same thing, even if the cognitive content has a different focus. Consider the sentences "you are a parent" and "you have a child". The cognitive content of the first focuses on what you are and the cognitive content of the latter focuses on what you have, and yet they both reference the same truth condition and so amount to the same claim. — Michael

Yes, that is quite correct, though I would be tempted to nitpick on behalf of Frege and say that they have the same truth conditions and hence reference the same truth values in all circumstances.

It's implicit in the schema that the sentence mentioned on the one side is the same sentence used on the other side. — Michael

That depends. If it's the disquotational shema (or the homophonic case for the T-shema) that is at issue, then, yes, the sentence mentioned is the same as the sentence used (and both are interpreted in the same language). But in the T-shema derived from a Tarskian truth theory, there is no requirement that the object-language and the meta-language be the same. The meta-language has its own semantic rules fixed and is used to specify truth conditions for the sentences of the object-language. And in both cases (either the simple disquotational schema or the T-schema instanciations of some Tarskian truth theory) the interpretation of the schema instanciations as counterfactual conditionals, where the antecedent specifies some counterfactual semantic rule for the mentioned language, is incorrect.

I'm stating the T-schema where the sentence mentioned on the one side is the sentence used on the other side. So whatever language it's in, with this condition the bidirectional equivalence holds.

"X" is true iff X and X iff "X" is true. — Michael

Yes, if you settle on a specific language, whatever this language might be, then the material equivalence holds. But then it can't be interpreted as a subjunctive conditional. And you also need to indicate that, when you choose some language L different than English, then you mean your statement of specific shema instanciations to be interpreted in L rather than in English. The default is to interpret sentences that are used as being written in English (on this forum, anyway).

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. — The Great Whatever

Obviously, you overlooked my explicit qualifier "by us". This is always assumed by the logicians and philosophers of language who make use of the disquotational shema. We are not talking about counterfactual situations where the mentioned sentence has a different meaning. We are rather talking about counterfactual circumstances where its truth value varies as a function of the way the world is in those circumstances.

It is because of this that it is the case that P does not entail that "P" is true (although it does so if certain conditions are satisfied), and that therefore, the pre-linguistic universe counterexample stands. — Sapientia

Yes, I think we can agree that in the distant past, when there weren't any language users around, and hence there were no rules governing the use of the words employed in "P", it was still the case that P. 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:

"P" is true if and only if P

For instance:

"There were triceratops around 68 million years ago" (as expressed by us now) is true if and only if there were triceratops around 68 million years ago.

So, it's not really the disquotational shema in itself that is the source of Michael's trouble. (And indeed, most logicians and philosophers of language don't have any trouble with this schema, though they may disagree on their detailed accounts of truth and meaning.)

OK, so, that dinosaurs were walking the earth, although true now, was not true at the time. But now that we have judged it to be true that they were walking the earth it will be true for all time, even at some time in the future, when there are no humans? — John

No, that's not what I meant to imply. That dinosaurs were walking the Earth is both a fact and the content of a true judgment. The content of the judgment is what is shared between different people who judge this content to be true. It also can be the content of other propositional attitudes such as hopes, fears, or it can figure in more complex thought such as, e.g. being the antecedent of a conditional.

All I meant to convey rather is that, if there had been people present at the time when dinosaurs were roaming the Earth, and who would have been in a position to judge this to be the case, and who may or may not have expressed this judgment using whatever language that had sufficient conceptual resources for expressing it, those people would have been entertaining the very same thought content that we now are able to express with a past tense statement. The very same judgment expressed by them, then, can be expressed by us now. So, its being true doesn't depend on them, or us, existing at all. The content of any judgment actually entertained by someone at a specific time (i.e. its truth conditions) necessarily must be ascertained as a function of the concepts employed (reflected in the use of the words that express them) but the truth value of those judgments only depend on what is the case in the world at the relevant time (and not necessarily at the time when the thought is entertained).

I had explained this earlier in rather more details here, here and here.

... we can consider the case of how given the worldly circumstances some dessert ought to be evaluated as a red velvet cake (or not):

This is a red velvet cake iff this recipe was successfully followed.

If the above is true then the below is true.

This recipe was successfully followed iff this is a red velvet cake.

So it doesn't matter whether you explain it in terms of material or subjunctive equivalence or in terms of instructions for evaluation; it can be read in either direction. — Michael

There is a crucial disanalogy that you are overlooking. Correctly following the recipe for a velvet cake ensures the production of a velvet cake, let us assume. However, correctly following the semantic rules of a language doesn't ensure that "Smokey the cat is on the mat", when correctly evaluated to be true according to those rules, implies that Smokey the cat is on the mat. That's only guaranteed to be the case when the semantic rules are those of the English language. If they are the semantic rules for another language, then it may be the case that "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is correctly evaluated to be true according to those rules while Smokey the cat isn't on the mat.

I thought that you'd notice the difference, too. I'm glad that I'm not the only one to object to Michael's attempt to conflate the two.

I'd add that one is about that which is true (a sentence which satisfies certain truth conditions; language), whereas the other is about that which is the case (a fact or state of affairs; the world). — Sapientia

It seems to me that you and TGW may be making too much of that. Even though one sentence has an English expression as its grammatical subject, it mentions it (and refers to its meaning) as an indirect means of making a claim about what is the case in the world, whereas the other sentence makes that very same claim directly. Michael is right to point out that they are logically equivalent in that respect -- in that they logically imply one another -- assuming only that the meaning of the mentioned sentence is held fixed and taken to be its ordinary meaning in English. It is through forgetting this necessary assumption (in counterfactual contexts) that Michael sometimes run into trouble, it seems to me.

I knew that is what you would say, that you would pick the second option. I was interested to hear what Pierre would say. — John

Yes, I agree with Michael. Judgments that are true at the time when they are judged or expressed are true at all times. If one correctly judges at one time that Smokey the cat is (at that time) on the mat, then this judgment remains true at a later time when Smokey has wandered off the mat. The very same judgment (the content, not the speech act) then can be re-expressed with the use of a different 'situational sentence' that includes a verb in the past tense.

It follows from this that in all cases where "Smokey the cat is on the mat" (in English) is (or would be) true, Smokey the cat is (or would be) on the mat, and in all cases where "Smokey the cat is on the mat" (in English) is (or would be) false, Smokey the cat isn't (or wouldn't) be on the mat. — Michael

That's exactly right. But notice that it doesn't follow that in all cases where "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is (or would be) true in some other language than English, in 'New English', say, Smokey the cat is (or would be) on the mat. And yet this is what you were saying. Even though you actually meant your claim to be interpreted as if you were expressing the consequent in 'New English', this use isn't warranted by the normal interpretation of the T-shema.

(On edit: I had missed the second part of your comment, so I responded to that below)

Where does my logic fail? You say that "the cat is on the mat" would be false if the cat were not on the mat, and so we have ¬C > ¬P (using the subjunctive conditional). As per transposition this is equivalent to P > C, which is that the cat would not be on the mat if 'the cat is on the mat' would be false". — Michael

Yes that's correct so long as you hold fixed the range of actual+counterfactual (i.e. 'possible') circumstances in which the implication sign can be interpreted as material implication. Saying that P > C is equivalent to saying that in all possible worlds at which P, it also is the case that C. Hence, relative to this very same range of possible worlds, it also follows that whenever ¬C, it also is the case that ¬P. But this needs not have the same significance as ¬C > ¬P, since the range of possible worlds that ¬C singles out may be a different range. And that is indeed the case where your contentious interpretation of the T-shema is concerned. For the case where the T-shema is correctly interpreted, the relevant range of counterfactual circumstances includes, precisely, worldly circumstances (i.e. ways for things to be) relative to which the truth of object-language sentences are to be evaluated in accordance with their (indirectly) stipulated meanings. There is no ranging over other possible (i.e. non-actual) reference assignments to the object-language terms.

Hence, you are licensed to say, on the basis of the T-shema instanciation previously discussed, that in all cases where Smokey the cat is (or would be) on the mat, "Smokey the cat is on the mat" (in English) is (or would be) true, and in all cases where Smokey the cat isn't (or wouldn't be) on the mat, "Smokey the cat is on the mat" (in English) is (or would be) false. Hence, material equivalence holds relative to a specific range of circumstances. This range of possible circumstances, envisioned by the T-shema instanciation, is a range of circumstances in which Smokey is located at various places, not all of them "on" the mat. But, relative to all the possible worlds in that range, the meanings of the English words used to state the theory, and the meanings of the object-language words (which can be the same language as the meta-language) are held fixed. It's precisely because they are held fixed that the T-shema doesn't licence the ¬C > ¬P subjunctive conditional claim that you want to derive from it, where they would be allowed to vary over circumstance of linguistic use in which meaning assignments to the words of the object-language would be different than those that are intended by the specific truth theory that this T-shema instanciation is a theorem of.

Yes, and don't call me Hilary. — Sapientia

Hilary is a man, and nobody called you Putnam.

A subjunctive conditional is a counterfactual conditional, and the T-schema doesn't seem to use a counterfactual conditional. If it did (pun intended) it would look like this: — Michael

Rather than focus exclusively on what it looks like, you ought to focus a little more on how it is used. Remember that it is you yourself who introduced explicitly a contentious counterfactual conditional statement, insisted that it be read as such, and invoked Tarski's T-shema in order to justify it. My rejoinder was that you were reading the T-shema in the wrong direction.

The sort of claim that you wish to defend is:

(1) If "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true, then Smokey the cat is on the map.

And you also insisted that your claims should be understood as counterfactual conditionals (one such claim was concerning horses, rabbits and synonymy).

It is true that (1), interpreted as a material inference, can be validly inferred from

(2) If "Smokey the cat is on the mat" is true if and only if Smokey the cat is on the map.

However, when read as a subjunctive conditional in which '"the cat is on the mat" is true' is the antecedent, (1) becomes a misrepresentation of (2) as it is intended to be read in the context of a Tarskian truth theory.

That's because instanciations of the T-shema (as derived from the meaning assignment axioms of the theory) are meant to be interpreted as a recipe, or instruction manual, that tells you how, given specific worldly circumstances (e.g. circumstances either actual or counterfactual where horses are or aren't rabbits, or where Smokey the cat is or isn't on the mat) sentences in the object language ought to be evaluated as true or false.

This is why (2) must be understood as stating the conditions under which "the cat is on the mat" is correctly evaluated, in whatever object-language is being formalized by the truth theory, rather than as stating what the conditions in the world would be (counterfactually) if the mentioned object-language sentence were true. It can't mean both, for in that case the account would be viciously circular.

But, going back to the topic, I doubt whether I'd have much to say that hasn't already been said, and probably said in a better way than I could. I found myself in agreement with yourself and Marchesk. This post earlier on made a good point, I think: — Sapientia

Yes, I agree with Marchesk, and with Searle, that an ability merely to respond to external stimulations in accordance with algorithmic rules can't, in itself, constitute understanding.

Searle, however, believes that human verbal behavior is meaningful because the intentional content of speech acts are derivative from the intentional contents of the mental acts standing behind them, and he also believes that the latter contents ("intrinsic intentionality") are an emergent biological property instantiated in some mysterious way in human brains.

I agree with Michael that this is a mistake and that the proper place to look for understanding and intentionality is the public behavior of an agent in the world; and meaning is thus best reflected in the use of linguistic expressions. I think such an agent, though, must be a living rational animal and can't be a computer. Michael may be disagreeing with this. Our long digression may have just begun to touch on some disagreement about what forms of public behavior are constitutive or expressive of genuine ("intrinsic") understanding and intentionality.

Ok, well if that's the sense in which you're using it, then fair enough. Thanks for clarifying. It makes sense to me, given your examples, although not so much with regards to references to the past, present and future. Something about that strikes me as intuitively wrong. The differences are harder to ignore. — Sapientia

I think this may clash a little bit with intuition not because it contradicts common sense but rather because it doesn't mesh well with the way propositions with empirical content are commonly treated in philosophy, and, in particular, with the use of predicate logic and tense logic. There is a tendency, in analytic philosophy, to make time figure as part of the content of empirical propositions. This is implicitly assumed when time is represented by the tense of a verb.

When time is rather understood, in a more Kantian way, not as part of the content of an empirical thought (i.e. a thought that relates directly to a possible experience) but rather as part of the form of this thought, then counterintuitiveness of the claim that the two sentences "I ate eggs this morning" and "I ate eggs yesterday morning" can express the same thought is alleviated. We have to remember that we don't perceive the time at which we perceive sensible things in addition to perceiving those things (even when there is a clock nearby). One's ability to rationally relate those two forms of expression (about eggs) is constitutive of one's ability to keep track of time and hence, also, to think temporal thoughts and grasp their logical forms. This may need to be argued more fully, but I am veering off topic. I was hoping to come back to Martha's ability (or rather, lack thereof) to genuinely express thoughts.

I am using "thought" in the same way Frege is, to signify what is thought, which is the content of an assertion expressing it. What is thought -- the content of a mental act -- can also be questioned, hoped for, feared, hypothesized, etc., and in all cases be the same thought, in that sense. Hence if you are thinking that I am 6 feet tall and I am thinking that I am 6 feet tall, we are thinking the same thought. I would be expressing this thought with the sentence "I am six feet tall", while you would express it, while addressing me, with the sentence "You are six feet tall". Those two statements make use of to different speech act forms, since one of them uses the indexical "I" while the other one uses the indexical "you". But they can express the same thought in a suitable context (that is, as uttered by two different individuals suitably related). Likewise, my statement "the grass is wet over there" could, in some context, express the same thought that you would express with the statement "the grass is wet over here". I could also express the same thought myself on two separate occasions with those two different speech act forms just through moving between the two places. The later statement ("it's wet over here") can rationally bear -- i.e. confirm -- the previous statement ("it's wet over there") just because both statement express the same thought (assuming only that they are understood to encompass the same coarsely discriminated 'present' time).

Thoughts (or judgments) that are thus kept track of through displacement in space, or through keeping track of the passage of time, are called dynamic thoughts by Gareth Evans. To be able to entertain such dynamic thoughts, and master the system of situational sentences that relate their different forms of expressions at different times (and different locations) is a condition for being able to entertain them at all. For else, one would never be able re-express the very same empirical thought at two different occasions, and one wouldn't even be able to re-affirm, or contradict, or empirically verify, or infirm, an empirical thought that one had previously entertained.

For any sentence "P", if P, then "P" is true for all cases in which "P" can be formed; and for all cases in which "P" can't be formed, then "P" would be true if it was formed. — Sapientia

You don't actually have to tie up the truth of an assertion, or of the linguistic expressions of a thought (that may have a force different than that of assertion or belief) to the circumstances that hold at the time of the utterance. One can equally say yesterday, or today, or tomorrow, in different manners, that Smokey the cat was on the mat yesterday at 11 o'clock. This very same thought would have been expressed yesterday with the situational sentence "Smokey the cat was (or is, or will be) on the mat today at 11 o'clock" or expressed the day before with the situational sentence "Smokey the cat is going to be on the mat tomorrow at 11 o'clock". This whole system of situational sentences enables one to express the same thought, with the same truth conditions, at different times, while making use of the time of elocution, in addition to the form of the speech act used, to determine the temporal thought being expressed.

Hence, one could say that, e.g.:

(1) "There were/are/will be triceratops roaming the Earth" is true iff there were/are/will be triceratops roaming the Earth.

In this case, "were/are/will be" signals the availability of a system of situatonal sentences. This means that the sentence "There are triceratops roaming the Earth" could (conceivably) have been used to express a truth 68 million years ago. But, more importantly, it also means that whatever though would have been expressed back then in that way is the very same thought that we can express now with the sentence "There were triceratops roaming the Earth 68 million years ago". Hence, the statement of the truth conditions of (the thought expressible by) a sentence doesn't require that there actually be anyone able to utter the statement at the time when its truth value is being evaluated, since we still are able to evaluate the truth of the very same thought (concerning past events) as expressed now with the use of a situational sentence that is part of the very same unitary system that allows the expression of this thought at any time.

(This is further discussed in Gareth Evans' The Varieties of Reference, under the heading of "dynamic thoughts" and in Sebastian Rödl's Categories of the Temporal, from whom I borrow the phrase "situational sentence")

There is a good critical opinion piece on CNN, written by Carolyn Shapiro, regarding Scalia's legacy, not in respect of his specific decisions, but rather in respect of his promotion of originalism (as a form of textualism).

1b) is:

(C → P) ∧ (¬C → ¬P)

Using transposition this gives us:

(C → P) ∧ (P → C)

Which is material equivalence. — Michael

Only if you insist on reading "→" to signify material implication. And this is a rather bad misconstrual of the significance of the T-shema instantiation, as I have explained. But you had suggested that the biconditional form shows that the correct reading is material implication rather than subjunctive conditional. This is a non sequitur since the fact that the statement can be written "(C → P) ∧ (¬C → ¬P)" or "(C → P) ∧ (P → C)" tells you nothing whatsoever about the significance of "→". Instead, you have to reflect a little about the pragmatic significance of the shema in the context of the truth theory it is pulled from. It is this pragmatic significance (i.e. how Tarski's truth theory is meant to be used) that recommends the subjunctive conditional interpretation, as I have explained.

I'm not sure how this makes a difference. You accept that if "X" and "Y" are synonymous then "X is Y" is true and you accept that if "X is Y" is true then X is Y. So it's a straightforward transitive relation to conclude that if "X" and "Y" are synonymous then X is Y. If the premises are true and the conclusion is a valid derivation then the argument is sound. — Michael

Yes, if, in fact (i.e. in the actual world) "X" and "Y" are synonymous, and hence have the same referent (Bedeutung) and the same Fregean sense (i.e. they have the same use in the language) then it is also true that X is Y. Hence you can say that:

(1) If "X" and "Y" are synonymous then X is Y

But this must be understood as a material implication, and not a subjunctive conditional. It says that if the antecedent is true, in the actual world, then so is the consequent. It doesn't say anything about counterfactual circumstances. (Though it might be construed as a subjunctive conditional where the antecedent ranges over epistemically possible circumstances rather than alethically possible circumstances; this would make sense if we don't actually know whether, in the actual world, the antecedent it true; that is, s/he who makes the statement doesn't know what either "X" or "Y" mean).

So, this sensible reading would seem to be sufficient to support your point that meaning is use but need no land you in a pickle where you seem committed to infer:

(2) If "X" and "Y" were (counterfactually) synonymous then X and Y would be numerically identical (even though they actually aren't numerically identical).

which is either a misuse of language or expresses a metaphysical impossibility due to the necessity of identity (argued for by Ruth Barcan Marcus and Saul Kripke). But you really don't need that in order to convey your main point, it seems to me.

It might not have been his intention but the logic of a biconditional is such that it can be read in either direction. — Michael

As I explained, just because the connective "if and only if" is used doesn't entail that the conditionals used signify material implications rather than subjunctive conditionals. In Tarski's case, it's the latter that's signified since the circumstances where the antecedent is evaluated range over all possible circumstances (and not just actual circumstances) where this mentioned string of words might be used. Both the "if" and the "only if" signify subjunctive conditionals, and both of those must be read from right to left, since we want the meaning and truth value of "the cat is on the mat" to be determined in all circumstances including circumstances where the cat isn't on the mat.

For instance, the T-shema instanciation:

(1a) "The cat is on the mat" is true iff (i.e. in all cases and only those cases where) the cat is on the mat

is equivalent to the conjunction:

(1b) "The cat is on the mat" is true if the cat is on the mat and "The cat is on the mat" is false if the cat isn't on the mat.

Those all are subjunctive conditionals and they are all meant to be read from right to left; that is, the meanings of the words used on the right hand side are held fixed for purpose of stating unvarying truth conditions meant to apply in the whole range of possible circumstances where the truth of the mentioned sentence (on the left-hand side) is to be stipulated.

This is why use of a biconditional is needed. But it doesn't really matter. You don't need to change the meaning of Tarski's T-shema in order justify your own use of it in a different context; and I think I now have a better grasp of what you are driving at.

The example I gave didn't use a counterfactual meaning. It used ordinary English. If "horses are equine animals" is true then horses are equine animals. — Michael

In that case your example doesn't have anything to do with the T-shemas that occur in a Tarskian truth theory, and so it's unclear why you attempted to rely on this notion. In the context of such a theory, a T-shema states general truth conditions for a sentence expressed in the object-language and hence has the force of a subjunctive conditional where the truth value of the antecedent is defined as true or false in all possible circumstances, accordingly, whether the condition stated in the consequent is satisfied or not in those circumstances.

Even then, that I can state the T-schema in a language other than English, e.g. French, is that I can state the T-schema in a language other than English, e.g. New English.

You can express the T-shema (and the whole truth theory this shema is derived from) in whatever language you like, including "New English". But such a T-shema tells you nothing about the meanings of the words used on the right-hand side of the shema. Those meanings are assumed to be understood by the theorist who uses the meta-language to state the truth conditions of the sentences mentioned on the left-hand side of the shema.

Also, the T-schema is biconditional so it can be read either way. We can say that "snow is white" is true iff snow is white or we can say that snow is white iff "snow is white" is true. It's an iff, not just an if.

The reason why it's a biconditional simply is because if the T-shema were rather a simple conditional such as:

(1) "The cat is on the mat" is true if the cat is on the mat,

then this would leave the truth value of "the cat is on the mat" undetermined in all cases where the cat isn't on the mat. But we want to stipulate that "the cat is on the mat" is false when the cat isn't on the mat; hence the biconditional. Tarski's intention never was to imply that truth values of object-language sentences determine what can be truly be said in the meta-language.

Which part? You agreed with 'If "horses" and "equine animals" are synonymous then "horses are equine animals" is true' in your previous post and 'If "horses are equine animals" is true then horses are equine animals' is the T-schema, which you accept. The conclusion 'therefore if "horses" and "equine animals" are synonymous then horses are equine animals' simply applies the transitive relation. — Michael

You are reading the T-shema in the wrong direction (from left to right rather than right to left) because the T-shema arises in the context of a truth theory that derives truth conditions for sentences of the object-language (mentioned in the left hand-side), and states those truth conditions in the meta-language used by the theorist -- in our case, English. Hence the meanings of the terms used on the right hand side of the biconditional are assumed to be their ordinary meanings in English. What is allowed to vary, in a range of counterfactual circumstances, isn't the meanings of the object-language sentences mentioned on the left-hand side, but rather the worldly circumstances in which their truth values are evaluated.

For instance the (homophonic) T-shema:

(1) "Snow is white" is true iff snow is white

just like the T-shema (stated in French):

(2) "Snow is white" est vrai ssi la neige est blanche

both state exactly the same thing, e.g., that the object-language (i.e. English) sentence "snow is white" is evaluated true in circumstances where snow is white and is evaluated false in (counterfactual) circumstances where snow isn't white. The T-shema is never concerned with counterfactual circumstances where the meanings of the words (of either the object- or meta-language) would be allowed to vary. On the contrary, the meanings of the terms of the meta-language are assumed to be understood and the meanings of the terms of the object-language are assigned with the use of the meta-language. (Those atomic meanings assignments to individual words actually are stated in the axioms of the Tarskian truth theory, while the T-shemas are theorems that are recursively deduced on the basis of those axioms.)

We need to know that the things we call "horses" are the things we call "equine animals". Which is to say that we need to know that we use the words "horses" and "equine animals" to talk about the same thing. And what does talking about the same thing consist of? What's the metaphysics behind talking about the same thing? I'm loathe to any interpretation that claims there's more to talking about things than behaviour, intention, and the empirical contexts that influence and measure them. How can anything else become a part of language, meaning, and understanding? This was Dummett's point.

I agree with everything in this paragraph of yours.