We could very quickly decarbonize if our leaders wanted to. — Xtrix

This is the very important point where we disagree; I just don't believe this is true.

I think rapid decarbonization is a pipe dream; Vaclav Smil is very convincing on this. We could cut down on greenhouse gas emissions if we were all prepared to drive tiny cars, use bicycles for local transport, take public transport, stop traveling overseas, use air-conditioners only when absolutely necessary, go to bed when it gets dark and rise when the sun does, stop buying a whole lot of useless crap and so on.

But, then what about the "third world"? Are they not entitled to enjoy the fossil fuel extravaganza, just as we have for the last 100 years or so?

Democratic governments will not promote energy frugality, because they know it will be unpopular. Who wants to be told they can't drive their massive SUV, run the air-conditioner whenever they want, or travel as much as they can afford overseas? Besides if we all stop consuming so much the plutocrats' profits will plummet! :roll:

No one wants to contemplate. let alone endure, a diminished lifestyle, eroded prosperity. We are creatures of habit, and once we are used to something we enjoy the last thing we want is to let it go. Modern civilization is like a juggernaut, and the idea that anyone is at the helm and in control of its trajectory is a mass delusion.

:cool:

I tend to think that ethical values are "no-brainers" given that we are dependent on the collective, and there is no rational justification for treating anyone differently than anyone else, when it comes to matters concerning fairness and justice. The problem is not that we don't know what social values should be, but that we fail to live up to them.

Justification seems easy enough when it comes to "modest empirical matters", which make up a good percentage of our practical concerns. The same goes for truth in this connection; it is only when it comes to metaphysics and aesthetics where there is any rationale for much disagreement. "Each to their own" should take care of that; if only good will predominated. But good will does not predominate, and that's down to human recalcitrance in my view.

So, basically what I'm saying is that metaphysical issues: idealism vs physicalism. immaterialism vs materialism, realism vs ant-realism and so on are not of much significance, or at least ought not to be, when it comes to the critical issues facing us. On the contrary social harmony in a complex pluralistic society requires tolerance of difference and diversity.

I think so, when it comes to ordinary judgements about what is directly observed. I mean, would you seriously question whether the judgement "snow is white" is correct or believe that it is rendered incorrect, impotent or irrelevant by "theory-ladenness"?

We do have to be careful, though, because observation is theory-laden. — Pie

If everything is theory-laden, then our judgements are fucked because we would find ourselves in an infinite regress of theory-ladenness. I accept that when it comes to observations and the judgements that issue therefrom, there is a terminus in experience as it is given, which means that even children understand very early (they only need to understand the requisite language) how to discern truth and falsity in statements concerning simple observations.

It might be like figuring out if you are driving on the correct side of the road. Norms are enforced more or less gently. A young man might think he's a great violinist and continue to fail to impress those who recognize such talent professionally. A humble young woman might think she's only mediocre at math and continually amaze her teachers with her genius. Probably both will move toward correction. No man is an island. We've evolved to work together, respond to censure and praise. — Pie

With "self-knowledge" I was thinking more along the lines of understanding one's motives, not of assessing one's skills in disciplines where a simple reality check could disabuse one of any deluded notions of one's abilities. The kind of thing I am thinking of in that context would be "why do I feel compelled to inflate my assessment of my abilities"?

We can see that the fault in this justification lies within the assumption that a change to the temporal continuity of existence would necessarily be observed by you. Since this is a required premise in that justification, and it is not a sound premise, truth cannot be ascertained through that justification, and doubt is summoned. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are taking the radical skepticism position I have already said I'm not concerned with. I'm not concerned with it because there are no known instances of "changes to the temporal continuity of existence", which means we have no reason to take their possibility into consideration. If we do find one, then we can start worrying about it.

As I already said I am concerned only with the context of everyday experience. since this is the context in which propositional statements and our judgements about their truth find their relevance.

a. "snow is white" is true iff snow is white
b. snow is white iff the mind-independent material world is a certain way
c. Therefore, "snow is white" is true iff the mind-independent material world is a certain way

That would be closer to the traditional correspondence theory. — Michael

It doesn't need to be "the mind-independent material world" and cohering with "some specified set of sentences" is not enough; simply being in accordance with what is experienced will do. People see snow, even if only in pictures, and it is generally white, so all one needs to know in order to understand that ":snow is white" (taken as a broad statement) is true is that snow is white.

Even children would know "snow is purple" is not true, just on account of having seen snow. On the other hand if you spray painted some snow purple, and then said "this snow is purple" of course again, even a child (who understands the words you uttered) will agree that would be true.

I can hardly doubt there are plums in the fridge if I'm looking at them. — Janus


Sure, but this is a comment about belief. It's psychology, not grammar. — Pie

To my way of thinking if I'm looking at plums in the icebox, I don't believe they are there, I see them there, I know they are there. And this has nothing to do with justification; it is more direct than that..Once I move away and the icebox is shut again, then I can't rightly say I know they are there, even if I can say I am justified in believing them to be there. They might be there or not; for example, say someone came just after I left the room and took them out.

This is not a Gettier case, but I see a problem with JTB here; am I justified in believing they are there or not, once I have left the room and the icebox is closed? If I think it unlikely, or even impossible, that anyone would, or could, have come and moved the plums, then I am justified in believing them to be there, but I still don't know they are there, and according to JTB could only be said to know they are there if they are there. But despite thinking I might be justified in believing they are there, I don't know it, and it seems absurd to condition my being counted as knowing they are there or not on whether they are there or not, when I don't really know whether they are there or not, but merely count myself as being justified in thinking that they are there..

I suggest that knowledge is not about certainty but rather about protocols. Do I know that 2–√ is irrational ? Yes. But I can't gaze on it. I just know how to justify that claim.

But let's say that I think I saw them with my own eyes. Perhaps my memory is incorrect. Perhaps I hallucinated. Metaphysical certainty is a dead end. In fact, it only makes sense with the help of an absolute concept of truth. Assume P. — Pie

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have a different view. For me knowledge is about certainty, certainty that is, not in any "absolute" sense, but in the context of everyday experience. If I see plums in the fridge, I am certain they are there. If I close the fridge door, and am still standing in front of the fridge I am virtually as certain that they are there. If I leave the room for a few moments and then return, I might still be almost as certain. If I left the room for an hour, and was confident no one else was around then I might still be almost as certain. And so on. But I would say that I only know, that is I can only be certain ( i.e. without any attendant doubt) that they are there if I am looking at them. Once I step away, knowledge steps aside with me, and belief kicks in, to be assessed as more or less justified.

Obviously here I am not taking seriously the possibilities that I have hallucinated the plums or that my memory might be incorrect; such possibilities belong to the unknowable, 'absolute' radically skeptical context I am ignoring as being irrelevant in the everyday context, the only context that I, at least, am concerned with.

It should be obvious I don't agree with that unargued bit of nonsense.

But this only works in contexts, the empirical or the logical, where it is decidable just what being warranted or justified consists in, — Janus


How are such contexts to be decided if not rationally ? This is as simple as offering reasons for claim that a context is or is not subject to rational norms. Admittedly people sometimes just stop talking and wage war. — Pie

In logical contexts what is warranted is what is valid, In empirical contexts what is most directly warranted is what is observable. Then there is the less determinable criteria of what makes sense in terms of our causal understandings of how things work. What would be the criteria for warrantability in metaphysics or aesthetics?

We've discussed this some already, of course. To me philosophy is not simply constituted by (potentially) justifiable claims. It makes such claims about such claims. It discusses justification in the first place. This is human self-knowledge. We make explicit the nature of our behavior-coordinating 'chirps and squeaks.' This surely involves creativity. Where do shiny new hypotheses come from ? The strong philosopher is like a non-fiction poet, not only seeing human reality in a new way but making a case for this being better than a merely exciting madness and instead a deeper and truer rationality. I agree with you that the point is to put more life in to life, to live more vividly. It's not given that self-knowledge is the best path toward this goal, but I think it's a path. — Pie

Right, but as above, what can we say, and how do we justify what we say, about the justifiability of claims that lie outside the logical or empirical contexts?

So, you mention self-knowledge; how do I know that I am knowing myself, that is how do I tell that the ideas I have formed about myself are justifiable? Do I appeal to agreement from others? Do I assume that I know myself better than others do? How could I find out whether I know myself better than others do?

It's a well worn reversal, but I think it is salient: "the unlived life is not worth examining"; how do I go about justifying thinking that is true or not, or even merely salient, or not? Does it not convince (or not) on the basis that it somehow "feels right" (or not)?

In philosophy, say I weave my understandings and insights into a coherent, magisterial system of ideas; a magnificent intellectual feat involving both creative originality and a lot of hard work; could any of that justify thinking that my system is therefore true? Is justification in philosophy merely rhetorical? What could be the alternative? Consensus, perhaps? That wouldn't seem likely!

I don't see that. for me, the words on the right of "iff" in '"Snow is white" is true iff snow is white' point to the grounding fact of snow being white (or not).

To be sure 'snow is white' is a generality, and, in a sense an approximation, since there is no absolute standard of white, but if snow is, generally, white, then it is that actuality that leads us to count '"snow is white" is true', or 'snow is white' as being true.

:up:

I agree with you that Heidegger's idea of dasein, that it is always "mine", although that is of course a generality not a solipsism, points to the particularity and uniqueness of each individual ( even if only potential). I have a horror of that potential being subsumed by the collective "das Man".

I could be trusting the word of another. Knowledge is about warranted assertion. If I turn out to be wrong, I can make a case for my right to have made the incorrect claim. For instance, I trusted a trustworthy person.

The path you seem to be going down is too subjective in my view. You are going 'first-person' and invoking uncheckable private experience. — Pie

If you are trusting the word of another then I would say you believe there are plums in the icebox, not that you know it. Of course it is all relative to some context or other. If the icebox is shut and you are not looking at the plums then you are trusting your memory; how reliable is it? Did you see the plums in there five minutes ago, or a month ago? If you trust another you trust both their word and their memory.

That is one of the problems I have with knowledge as JTB; how do we know when our beliefs are justified? What are the criteria that must be satisfied for a belief to be counted as justified? It cannot be a precise science, and it would seem there must be degrees. Why do we need to speak in terms of "knowing" at all rather than in terms of more or less certainty or doubt?

First person experience is most checkable by the first person: I think that is unarguable. Most checkable is when I am actually looking at the state of affairs my belief is about; I can hardly doubt there are plums in the fridge if I'm looking at them.

But I don't think certain pragmatist versions of truth were successful. — Pie

I agree; I'm not a fan of pragmatism. Ordinary empirical claims are checkable, so they are no problem unless one wants to nitpick subtleties in the weeds. The Peircean idea that the metaphysics arrived at by the "community of enquirers" at the end of enquiry would be the truth is absurd in my view. This seems to be a kind of scientistic hubris to me. They could all be wrong, or metaphysical perspectives in general may be "not even wrong" in that they are inadequate to life itself.

Whatever. You appear to be returning to point that have already been addressed rather than progressing the discussion.

You moved back from what is true to what is understood, relevant, known, believed. — Banno

Well, no, I haven't moved back to anything; I've been saying the same thing all along and only repeating myself to clear up other's misreadings of what I've been saying. But yes, whatever...shall we leave it there?

I agree. Call it prejudice, but telling the truth seems beautiful and noble to me. I connect this to intuitions that Kantian articulated. Lying steals autonomy from others, treats them as a means. — Pie

That makes sense. although with the caveat that lying, not for personal gain or to protect the ego, but to protect the innocent (as, for instance, in the 'Gestapo, Jews hidden in the basement' example so troublesome for Kant's absolute imperative) treats the innocent as an end and is both beautiful and noble and, all the more so if it involves risk to the self.

hat you don't know that it is true does not make it not true... — Banno

And I haven't said it would; in fact I have said that it wouldn't. I was talking about the significance of specific claims that cannot possibly be checked; that is that they have no significance, but I have said that the fact that there are unknowable truths is of general significance.

So you have beliefs you think are not true? — Banno

No, do you? But you might have beliefs I don't think are true. Are your own beliefs the only ones you care about?

This discussion might be more interesting if you addressed what I've said and didn't focus on picking me up on trivial points.

But you claimed that one cannot associate a truth value with a proposition unless there is a relationship between the saying and seeing/imagining... an apparently antirealist view. — Banno

How would you know what someone meant when they said "the cat is on the mat" if you did not associate those words with the cat being on the mat? How could you know whether "the cat is on the mat" was true, if you could not check to see if the cat was on the mat?

I'm not saying that a claim, say "there are aliens" cannot be true or false, even if we have no possibility of checking, but that the claim would be meaningless if we would not see or fail to see aliens if we could somehow be where they purportedly are. So truth cannot be, in principle, separated from seeing.

We care about beliefs because they are the things we take to be true. — Banno

Or not to be true. We don't care about them if we cannot possibly see whether they are true or not, though, do we?

But I also think that truth plays a role in a structure. Mostly we care about belief, and 'true' seems like a tool for talking about beliefs, perhaps in imagining them as certain, for instance. As Brandom might put it, we've invented words that allow us to talk about our thinking. Humans become self-consciously logical through inventing concepts like inference and truth...which 'only' made explicit what they are already in fact doing. — Pie

I agree. Belief is one thing, actuality another; which means our beliefs can be wrong. My point is only that our being wrong is irrelevant if there is no possibility of seeing that we were wrong. I think you are trying to point to the ( more general) significance of the possibility that we can be wrong, even when we have no possibility of seeing that we are wrong, and I acknowledge that general fact is important, to be sure, and it is what underpins the logic of our understanding of truth and meaning; which, as I've said, in my view is basically a logic of correspondence between saying and seeing (and being, with the caveat that in specific instances being is irrelevant if it, or at least its effects, cannot be seen).

If I tell you that there are plums in the icebox, I'm talking about those plums in that icebox. 'Phenomenologically' there's no detour through my imagination. The meaning of the assertion is worldly, directly revealing our shared situation. A rational reconstruction might include your motives, what you pictured, but this would be semantically secondary, in my view. — Pie

If you know there are plums in the icebox then you've seen them, and in telling me about them when the icebox is closed, you are remembering them being there, which amounts to imagining them. Unless I am there to witness the icebox you are referring to, or have seen it before and can thereby imagine it specifically, then I will only have a generalized picture of an icebox with plums in it.

Topic slide again. — Banno

Means nothing to me; just sounds vaguely like an insult.

Further, one chooses between a realist and an antirealist grammar. The best grammar for cats and mats is realist. — Banno

As far as I can tell all our "grammar" is realist. If we talk about cats on the mat, or plums in the icebox, we are talking about real cats, mats, plums and iceboxes if we are talking about things actually experienced or having the potential to be actually experienced.

But any truth has relevance or indeed substance only insofar as it could be seen to be true, or stipulated to be true in a fiction.

Fair enough. But that's not the intention of 'that cat is on the mat.' Because we can say 'I am picturing a cat on the mat just now." We reveal the world to one another in our true claims. — Pie

I'm not understanding what you're saying here; can you explain further?

The cat isn't on the mat if someone pictures it to be on the mat. It is on the mat if it is on the mat. — Banno

I don't see what that has to do with it. What relevance would the cat on the mat be if no one sees it or imagines it? If no one saw or imagined a cat on the mat then no one would say anything about a cat on the mat, and we wouldn't need to consider the relationship between saying and seeing/imagining, would we?

No, the cat being on the mat is seen or imagined, and the words "the cat is on the mat" evoke (in a generic sense) that seeing or imagining. Doesn't work for you? When you read a good novel, you don't imagine the events, places and people being depicted?

Also, as I said earlier, I agree with Heidegger that there is no correspondence "theory"; correspondence is just an account of how we generally think about the relationship between sentences and events, places and people; real or imagined.

Are we to understand the string of words as a 'picture' ? Do we really need this metaphor ?

I can see why it's tempting. We are such visual creatures that we use visual metaphors for grasping meaning. — Pie

When I read a novel, for example, the events depicted, the landscapes, architecture and people described are pictured by me, and it becomes a world I am immersed in (if it's a good novel). When I read "the cat is on the mat" I picture a cat on a mat. It's a kind of generic picture, to be sure, more detail could be added; is the cat tortoise-shell or ginger? Each of those words will evoke a different picture. How big is the cat? And the mat? What colour is the mat,? Is it outside or in a room? What colour are the walls of the room? Or if outside, is it sunny or raining? And so on.

Here's my answer: that the cat is on the mat is a use of the sentence "the cat is on the mat". We have, not an association between two differing things, but two ways of making use of the very same thing. — Banno

:That the cat is on the mat", sure, but not the cat being on the mat.The cat being on the mat is not a use of a sentence, but something we see or imagine. I could draw or paint it instead of speaking about it, "The cat is on the mat" is a symbolic expression, or representation of that seeing or imagining, and the two are thus associated, although not in any absolute or essential sense, but just because we do associate them

What might that correspondence be? — Banno

It consists simply in our association of the sentence "the cat is on the mat" with the cat being on the mat. We wouldn't be able to talk about anything if what we say did not correspond with (in the sense of being associated with or picturing) what we experience. This is basic.

As I read it the T-schema exemplifies the idea that the sentence "snow is white" being true depends on snow being white. The logic here is that truth depends on actuality, just as with Aristotle's formula. The basis of meaning is that what we say corresponds to (in the sense of being associated with via "picturing") what we experience (or imagine). If the "picturing" is true, in the sense of hitting the mark, of being accurate, then we have truth, if not, then we have falsity.

Note that we don't want a string of words to correspond to cat-on-the-mat-ness. So even 'correspond' is too much machinery here and only makes a mess. — Pie

I don't understand the correspondence to be anything more than an association we all make between what we say and what we experience. For me it creates no "mess" unless we try to metaphysicalize it into theory involving reifications such as "truthmakers".

Are you also a deflationist about truth ? If we focus only on the true asserts in the concept system, that'd seem to be the world itself. Any actual individual will presumably have false beliefs. So we might talk of a imperfectly grasped world for this individual. — Pie

I think I am a deflationist about truth, as I see actuality and truth as the most basic elements of the propositional dimension of life. I don't view that dimension as being most important, though, since I think this merely practical dimension is lost or occluded when and because the life of the soul is lost.

I see people who lie and deceive as being couched in fear and not fully alive. Everyone understands the very basic logic of actuality and truth, but they turn away from it only out of the most despicable capitulations to the unseemly destructive desires of the illusory ego to protect itself and flourish at the expense of the soul, of others and even of the world.

That said, it is also a matter of degree, and we all fall into the trap of the ego to some extent. All we can do is try to see and understand where we are falling, and minimize it.

The T-schema is a generality, and it applies to our talking and what we talk about; it formulates the logic of correspondence, which is the common and unproblematic understanding of truth. It is trivial in the sense that it expresses what everyone already knows, before they twist themselves in pointless analytical knots trying to penetrate to something "deeper", or "more certain". There is no other coherent understanding of truth, so why seek to search for something further?

That actuality in its 'nudity' is hard to make sense of. The actuality of the cat being on the mat is that the cat is on the mat. Redundant, it seems to me.

Folks might use their visual imagination and 'see' the cat on the mat as the 'real thing.' But this makes the truthmaker inaccesibly private and implicitly visual. — Pie

The actuality that corresponds to "the cat is on the mat" is the cat being on the mat. This is exactly the logic of the T-sentence. Or Aristotle's formulation: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”.

Both express the logic of correspondence, the logic of common usage; it is basic, what more do we need? There is no need to complicate matters, when it comes to something even children easily understand, it seems to me.

Is Heidegger also too Cartesian? He rejected truth as correctness in favor of truth as whatever discloses itself to Dasein. — Joshs

I believe that Heidegger accepted the correspondence account, only he didn't understand it as being primary insofar as it only comes into play after the truth as disclosure has done its work. I see truth as disclosure as actuality, that is as what acts (on us). I think Heidegger rejected the idea that correspondence could be theory in any metaphysical sense, and acknowledged it as being merely an account of the common understanding of propositional truth. But this is from long memory of having studied Heidegger about 15 years ago, and I don't have a ready reference for it.

It's perhaps as if a crystalline web of concepts sits in a bath of ineffable of sensation and emotion. — Pie

Or stands aside from, or outside of, the ineffable sensation and emotion. But it seems that "crystalline web of concepts just is the world that is the totality of facts, while the things are the sensations, impressions and images.

This is born out by the ambiguity of the word 'fact', as it refers to both states of affairs and propositions about them.

I don't mean that you are a relativist or anything. — Pie

I guess in a sense I am a relativist, and in another sense not. We know that we all share similar impressions and images of the world. I don't see a tree where you see something else. I don't see the apple as red while you see it as yellow or green. I don't see a tiger on the mat where you see a cat.

It's only when we theorize and slow down that we infer that we must be 'automatically' synthesizing objects from light hitting our retina, but surely our sense organs, along with the rest of us, take their own unique tours through this world. — Pie

Right, I think per-linguistically things are more or less familiar to us as "affordances" of one kind or another. They already disclose themselves prior to our naming of them. Birds recognize trees as things to perch in, for example. But the idea of the tree as "whole object" is what I referred to as a "formal stipulation" whose rational identity is contingent upon the fact that we have named it 'tree', and most specifically "that tree".

Consider the claim that the common world is 'a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory.' Isn't this claim itself, according to itself,a part of 'a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory' ? — Pie

Right, prior to any conceptualization such that the common world and its objects are "formal stipulations" we always already all recognize things because of the commonality of our images and impressions with our own at other times and from other directions and with those of others, as manifested in our agreement of speech and action.

But I would argue that once we have consciously conceived the world in terms of individual entities that are the whole unities that are the origins of our images and impressions, we have already mad the formal stipulation, and we easily and naturally reify that as mind-independent objects, without being conscious of our acts of hypostasis.

My hunch is that the visual imagination is what makes the correspondence theory of truth attractive. — Pie

It seems that it is mostly on account of visual experience that we conceive of a world of real objects that correspond to our images and impressions, and constitute the states of affairs that render our propositions true or false.

re you tempted to say that we all live in different worlds ? But, if you were to say that, wouldn't you somehow talking about my world, while claiming to be stuck in your own ? — Pie

I would say that we all live differently in the one world. My world is not your world or anyone else's world but it is, like everyone else's world, part of the world. The salient point is, that common world is not something we ever experience, but is a formal stipulation based on resemblance and memory.

To understand this, think about the fact that we never perceive a whole object, we only perceive impressions or images, the continuity and resemblance of which lead the rational intellect to posit the object as the (transcendent) origin of the impressions,

I can't really object. Getting the life back into life sounds good. It is still a project, an individual vision anyway of the Better Thing to do, something of a metanarrative maybe (which is fine.) — Pie

I can see why you might see it as a project and equate it with "an individual vision anyway of the Better Thing to do, something of a meta-narrative" but I maintain that it is not necessarily so. Getting the life back into life could be, is in my understanding, getting beyond projects, ideals and meta-narratives, getting back to a kind of experience that was essentially there in childhood: getting back to the enchantment of the world, just as it is.

. If Jane's belief might be wrong and if Jane's belief is true then Jane's belief is true and might be wrong. — Michael

Jane's belief might be wrong or it might be right. If Jane' s belief is right then it's not true that it might be wrong. If Jane's belief is wrong, then it is not that it merely might be wrong, but that it is in fact wrong. It is only appropriate to say a belief might be wrong, if we don't know whether it is right or wrong.

You said that if we have a justified belief it might be wrong, which is true; but a justified belief is not knowledge, since knowledge is defined as a justified true belief. It is not the case that a justified true belief might be wrong. So many pages on this thread on account of a very basic confusion; it's puzzling!

However, states of consciousness may be also compatible with the sublime, as being those of deep intersubjectivity, such as in core understanding of ethics, intelligence and wisdom which can be applied in human affairs in life. — Jack Cummins

I see the core of ethics consisting in compassion, in fellow feeling and a practical sense of fairness and justice. Insofar as this is in the dimension of affect it is in common with the aesthetical and mystical, however I think it has essentially communal dimensions that don't necessarily belong to aesthetic and mystic experience.

Perhaps that is why our human thought, philosophy and scientific progress has so many loose ends, we have simply come to a rabbit hole with no end. For, it is the way we define those truths in our being which provides a veridical account of their truth, both within the scientific materialist state of consciousness as well as within an enlightened state of consciousness. — intrapersona

I think that because rationality and science rely on objectification, which is an abstraction from experience, a judgement of it, so to speak, they cannot touch the essence of religion and the poetical making of sense.

1. "p" is true iff p
2. "'p' is true" means "p" — Michael

The issue with the first is that it entails that all propositions exist: — Michael

This is problematic because it suggests that propositions exist as abstract entities (à la Platonism) which may be unacceptable to some. — Michael

Why? To me all it entails or suggests is that for every actuality a true corresponding proposition can be formulated.