With any theory of truth, you look for certain criteria to determine truth or falsehood. For instance, with correspondence theory, you look for correspondence between an idea and reality. Specifically, you need to determine if it's true that correspondence exists. — Tate

This is very close to what makes the most sense to me regarding falsification/verification. If we nix "it's true that" and swap "idea" with meaningful thought and/or belief it would resemble something very close to what I would be willing to defend.

Rest easy Sam...

Indeed. Logical notation takes account of common language use, or at least that's what it's supposed to be doing!

This is a very tricky thing to talk about. — Janus

It's all about that which is existentially dependent upon language and that which is not. We need language to draw and maintain that distinction, so our knowledge of that which is not existentially dependent upon language is most certainly dependent upon language. However, the existence of those things is not. There are certainly limits to what we can know about that which is not existentially dependent upon language.

Meaningful correspondence to fact is not, and that is where convention has gone completely wrong. The reason:Not having gotten belief(or meaning) right to begin with. Stuck analyzing propositions and attitudes towards them. Vestiges from centuries old approaches replete with the fundamental mistakes therein.

"What is the case" is meaningless beyond what is communally perceived and conceived to be the case. — Janus

Janus, while that is true, it is also true that "cat" is meaningless beyond what is communally perceived and conceived to be a cat.

Cats, however, do not require linguistic meaning, communal perception, or communal conception to exist in their entirety in the complete absence of everything needed for the term "cats".

The cat can be hunting a mouse and that would be the case, even if there were no one around... ever. Focusing upon the words, their meaning, and what language takes misses the point here... completely.

↪creativesoul continues the rejection of truth in favour of belief. Something to do with a correspondence between a mouse going behind a tree and biological machinery. I had difficulty following the discussion. — Banno

Difficulty indeed. There's no rejection of truth there Banno. Not in the least. What I've done is begin to point out that of all the notions of "truth", there is only one that could be sensibly attributed to language less belief. There is no other notion of "truth" that makes any sense at all when and where language has never been. Of course, given that you hold to convention and only talk about belief in terms of propositional attitude, you cannot get to where you need to go to situate at least one notion of "truth"(correspondence) prior to language. So much the worse for convention and followers thereof.

I could have set out all the common language aspects, but you and I almost entirely agree upon those. That's boring. Instead, I offered how and when correspondence to fact and the presupposition thereof first emerges, as well as the origen of meaning(how meaning is first attributed), so as to offer segue to how it later becomes the case that "is true" is redundant and truth is presupposed within statements of belief. What I offered also makes sense of my grandaughters' ability to know when she heard a false statement despite barely being able to string two or three words together. Of course, I did not connect all those dots, only having written a few relatively short paragraphs. I did offer an exhaustive outline though, or at least the beginnings of one.

Based on what? — Benkei

Four suits. Jan. 6. Georgia. New York suit. Now Mar-A-Lago. Still early in the last but, the new pic is worth a thousand words.

Conspiracy to defraud the United States. Seditious conspiracy. Obstruction of justice. Tax fraud. Treason.

He's not the only one who will be charged with some of those. Many are aiding and abetting and/or complicit co-conspirators. As soon as charges are brought, much if not most of the aiding and abetting will cease.

Trump is done.

:fire:

Because correspondence to fact is presupposed within all belief about the world, the presupposition of truth connects all thinking believing creatures to the world. This has been generally said to be limited strictly within the bounds of humanity. Entrenched in hubris borne of a gross misunderstanding of their own thought and belief, in addition to the overwhelming influence and power of the Church combined with ignorance, humans at the time were certain that thought and belief, in the main, separated us from other mere animals. One of those Greeks mirrored the sentiment. The Church had it that the other animals were, afterall, just beasts put here for us, not like us, but for us to use however we saw fit. While it is true, without doubt, that our thoughts and beliefs do indeed separate us from other animals, it quite simply does not follow from that that no other animal has any thought and/or belief about the world. Rather, it is the sheer complexity of our thought and belief that separates us and our meaningful experiences from 'dumb' animals, not the fact that we have thought and belief. Natural common language is pivotal here. That is what separates our thought and belief from language less thought and belief. That difference along with the transition between language less thought and belief and thought and belief that includes language use cannot be rightly understood by equating all belief to propositional attitude, for that is belief about language use. Language less belief is not about language use.

Basic rudimentary thought and belief formation is the inevitable autonomous result and/or product of certain biological machinery just plain doing its job. It's nothing magical, god-given, or all that special. It's also not all that complicated to understand. We need not turn on our biological machinery in order for it to begin working. We cannot turn it off. It happens all by itself. Thought and belief just happens given the right sorts of circumstances.

The presupposition of correspondence to fact is inseparable from the attribution of meaning within rudimentary thought and belief formation. Indeed, the two remain forever entwined. Some language less creatures are equipped with biological machinery similar enough to our own to be capable of drawing correlations between directly perceptible things. That is how all belief systems begin, how correspondence to fact is first presupposed, and how all things meaningful become so. The cat can believe that a mouse is behind the tree and that belief is true if the mouse is behind the tree, and false if it is not. The cat can have true or false belief that is meaningful to the cat despite not having language.

"Truth" is a term borne of language. Meaningful correspondence to fact is not and needs none.

That your example was meant to convey something about someone without language using correspondence, so I thought it important to say that language is part of your example.

But I missed the last sentence. OK, this is a contrast case, not an example. My bad. I was reading it as the example.

Sure, I agree that with a language less creature that they do not speak about truth or falsity or anything like that. Say a wild bird -- they communicate, but it's not with language. Or, perhaps we could say, it's a proto-language, prior to having the ability to represent its own sentences. — Moliere

I'm not talking about communication. I'm also not attributing communication to birds. I'm talking about belief, and how it pertains to and/or is germane to discourse about truth.

I can see how my example could have been taken the way you did. My bad, more than yours on that!

The example is one of an in between stage, meant to point out how we understand when some statements are false long before we have anything close to a linguistically informed notion of "truth".

The granddaughter is not language less. Did you bother to read the entire post?

Perhaps a better tact, though: if truth is more general than linguistic -- say it is a correspondence between some animal belief and facts or reality, construing belief broadly to indicate that it could be linguistic or not so as to make explicit that we're interested in this -- then we are the types of creatures that rely upon linguistic truth, and only by understanding this kind of truth would we even be able to make statements more general about this bigger-picture truth. — Moliere

Digging in...

There is no single referent for "linguistic truth". There are several. The only one applicable to language less creatures' belief is correspondence. My twenty-seven-month-old granddaughter knew that "there's nothing in there" was not true, despite her not having a linguistic notion of truth, because she knew what the utterance meant, and knew that there were things in there(the fridge).

That's correspondence understood long before ever learning to how to use the term "truth". Long before becoming aware of her own fallibility, long before skepticism and doubt have fertile enough ground to sprout, long before all that... she already knew when she heard a false claim about the contents of the fridge.

Language less creatures' belief is different though. They cannot know when some statement is false for they do not think, believe, or speak in statements. I'll leave it there for now...

Nice comparison/contrast regarding correspondence and T sentences.

:point:

Sheet-as-sheet to me indicates naming and descriptive practices accompanying the seeing. This eliminates language less seeing of the sheet, which - of course - is a problem.
— creativesoul

Is it? — Moliere

Well, sure it is! Some language less creatures can see a sheet. I would not say that they see a sheet-as-sheet. I don't think you would either.

Perhaps a better tact, though: if truth is more general than linguistic -- say it is a correspondence between some animal belief and facts or reality, construing belief broadly to indicate that it could be linguistic or not so as to make explicit that we're interested in this -- then we are the types of creatures that rely upon linguistic truth, and only by understanding this kind of truth would we even be able to make statements more general about this bigger-picture truth. — Moliere

Not exactly the wording I would use, but I think I agree with the general thrust/idea. I would only note that we not only rely upon notions of truth(linguistic truth), but...

...we also rely upon correspondence long before being able to talk about it. <--------that last bit, of course, cannot be arrived at without complex language use capable of thinking about our own thought and belief as a subject matter in its own right; which is the point you're making if I understand you correctly. If I do, then we agree on that.

What's the difference between seeing the sheet and seeing the sheet-as-sheet?
— creativesoul

I was going to say no difference — Moliere

Sheet-as-sheet to me indicates naming and descriptive practices accompanying the seeing. This eliminates language less seeing of the sheet, which - of course - is a problem.

Well, hold on a second there. Suppose the case of seeing the sheet-as-sheet. — Moliere

What's the difference between seeing the sheet and seeing the sheet-as-sheet?

You seem a bit too preoccupied with where you believe my position is mistaken. That's several times now where you've charged my position with some sort of confusion or mistake that you imagine, I suppose, that you understand. It's almost as if you do not understand that your ontology for meaning, truth, and belief stops at meaningful marks whereas mine digs a bit deeper.

What is it for snow to be a constituent of the fact that snow is white? Facts have parts? — Banno

Situations, circumstances, states of affairs, and/or events all have parts.

"Snow is white" is true by definition. The more interesting cases are not.

Also feel like noting that all of us have already undergone that transition, having started without language but then, through exposure to the language-using social world, we learned it through our social practices. (and hasn't anyone noticed how dogs, and our fellow apes, learn bits of language with training? That is, if the Lion spoke to me, I'd know what the Lion said -- at least as I think of things) — Moliere

Indeed. If we are to have a philosophically and scientifically respectable position, the evolutionary progression of meaningful thought and belief must be sensibly accounted for. That requires a notion of meaningful belief that is simple enough that language less creatures are capable, and rich enough in potential to account for the evolution into language use(langauge creation/acquisition) all the way through to thinking about thought and belief(and language use) as a subject matter in its own right(metacognition).

Current convention is incapable of doing that because it places the initial emergence of both truth and meaning on the wrong side of language creation/acquisition, amongst a few other fatal flaws(accounting malpractices).

I think I'd say the above is not a belief, but a belief-mediated perception. We see the sheet-as-sheep. We might hold beliefs about sheet-as-sheep -- but note how this strays from logic, and is clearly phenomenology, — Moliere

I'd say perception is linguistically mediated in us, but that perception simpliciter, in all species, does not require language. When we talk of beliefs in animals we're speaking in folk psychology. We understand the animals, being animals ourselves, and we're speaking of their psychological states... — Moliere

This seems consistent with indirect realism, idealism, and similar frameworks which work from the same fundamental mistake. Namely, that we have no direct access to the sheet(in this case), so we're not seeing the sheet, but rather only our perception, conception, sense datum, etc. thereof. I reject that view because it is based upon invalid and/or untenable reasoning(argument from illusion, etc.).

I'm not using "belief" in the same way you are either.

So, sure... there are different ways to account for meaningful thought and belief, and you've presented, roughly, one very popular mistaken one.

You're either right or not about those sentences that assert nothing.

This seems to have the odd result that the sentence "it is raining or it is not raining" is true because it corresponds to anywhere. — Banno

Put that one in the schema...

I would word it slightly different, the concept tree, includes the notion of something existentially separate from language. Whereas the notion of true and false seems dependent on linguistic content in an important sense. In other words, I can imagine a dog seeing a tree apart from language, but not a dog observing true and false apart from the application of these concepts within our linguistic framework. This can be a bit confusing, because when we talk about true and false, we often refer to objects (i.e., facts) that we observe, although not always (referring to facts as abstract objects).

There is definitely much more to say, and I'm sure we're not going to see eye to eye on some of this.

Sorry I didn't respond to all of your posts. I have a difficult time sitting for hours responding. So, I tend to take long breaks (sometime hours, days, weeks at a time). I find that social media can be a bit taxing, and in some ways unhealthy. — Sam26

For sure. I'm with you on that last bit. As it pertains to the rest...

What I offered in the previous couple of posts was where I thought our views were a bit different. Upon rereading, I also realized that I did not properly quantify my examples. What I mean is that the example given was about how true and false belief, and thus truth(and meaning) can exist without language. But that example(language less thought and belief) does not touch upon any of the cases where the notions of "true" and "false" are used to talk about things that are not independent of language. Those cases far exceed in sheer number alone the language less ones, in both the literature and common practice.

Be well until next time!

:up:

So what is reality — val p miranda

A fraught notion...

So, one stumbling block seems to be the position you hold about notions of true and false. You've expressed concerns, and rightfully so, about the difficulties inherent to any attempts to sensibly attribute the terms "true" and "false" to language less belief as a result of true and false being strictly linguistic notions. See if I can ease this difficulty...

Notions/concepts of "tree" are existentially dependent upon language. What we pick out with those notions/concepts is not. Trees are not existentially dependent upon language. Much the same holds good for the notions of "true" and "false" as they pertain to language less thought and belief...

There can be no question that all notions/concepts of "true" and "false" are linguistic, if by that I mean that those notions are existentially dependent upon language use. However, and this is key, what those notions pick out to the exclusion of all else is no more existentially dependent upon language than trees are. We use "trees" to pick out the things in my front yard. We use "true" and "false" to pick out things(belief in this case) that are consistent with and/or correspond to fact.

If there is a mouse behind the tree, then the fact consists of a mouse, a tree, and the spatial relationship between them from some frame of reference/vantage point. That fact is no more a sentence, string of letters, or marks on a screen than the tree, the mouse, or the spatiotemporal relationship is. If there is a creature, say a cat, that is capable of believing that that mouse went behind that tree, and the mouse is behind the tree, then that creature's belief is consistent with and/or corresponds to fact. The tree, the mouse, and the relationship between them are all meaningful to the cat as a result of the correlations drawn between them by the cat's biological machinery. They become meaningful by virtue of this process(drawing correlations).

That's a not too rough and ready outline/model of what meaningful language less thought and/or belief consists of and/or how it emerges onto the world stage. It's amenable to evolutionary progression as well as being commensurate with supervenience.

This discussion of language less creatures' belief directly pertains to the topic of truth, because if it is the case that a language less creature is capable of forming, having, and/or holding true and/or false belief, then it only follows that either true belief does not require truth, or truth exists prior to language. We can take this even further and surmise that some language less creatures are capable of forming, having, and/or holding meaningful true belief. It follows that either meaning exists prior to language, or belief need not be meaningful to the believing creature. The latter is absurd.

I'll give an example. Infants, I understand, have a sense of object permanence before they have a sense of object identity. If a toy is moved across their field of vision, passes behind a screen, and comes out as something else, that doesn't bother baby. If it doesn't come out at all, that does.

There's something in the ballpark of the conceptual going on there, I'd say, but what exactly, it's complicated. — Srap Tasmaner

A 'sense' of object permanence or an expectation(belief that something will come out the other side)?

I would go with the latter in that case. There is something similar to the conceptual going on there, but if the situation can be effectively/affectively exhausted without invoking the historically problematic notion of "concept" the better off we are.

Part of the problem is in separating those concepts that have an ontology that is separate from language, and yet part of language; and, those concepts that have an ontology that are strictly linguistic, viz., concepts like true and false. So, concepts like belief, moon, tree, etc., have an ontology that involves extra-linguistic things, but other concepts are strictly linguistic. Part of the problem is placing strictly linguistic concepts in a non-linguistic environment. I think this would be an interesting study. — Sam26

One example I like to use is the fire example. A language less creature, including but not limited to prelinguistic humans, can learn that touching fire causes pain without having a clue how to say, "touching fire causes pain", and without ever having an attitude towards that proposition such that they take it to be true. How can this be the case if believing that touching fire causes pain requires linguistic concepts?

Well, quite simply... it can't be if such belief requires linguistic concepts! Yet language less creature can and do learn and/or believe that touching fire causes pain. We can watch it happen. So, the only conclusion to draw here is that belief that touching fire causes pain does not require language or linguistic concepts. The difficulty in sensibly discussing and/or setting out language less belief is had in what the SEP characterized as...

the difficulty of usefully characterizing their mental lives without relying on the ascription of propositional attitudes...

...which I've recently found to be no problem at all. Although, I do reject the notion of 'mental lives' as a proper characterization of thought and belief. The belief emerges by virtue of the creature drawing correlations between the fire, the touching, and the subsequent pain they feel afterwards. There is nothing here that requires language, aside from our account of what happened. The fire, the touching, the subsequent pain, and the correlations drawn between those things(and others) are all existentially independent of language. That's what the belief consists of:The fire, the touching, the pain, and the correlations drawn between.

Belief that touching fire causes pain consists of the behaviour, the fire, the pain, and a creature capable of performing the behaviour as well as drawing the correlations between the aforementioned things. It is existentially dependent upon all of this. There is no need for language.

We can perform the same analysis with the belief that a mouse is behind the tree, as shown earlier in this thread as well as several others. The debate between Banno and myself also used that example in my opening statements about the content of belief.

There's no need for concepts here.

:up:

Part of the problem is in separating those concepts that have an ontology that is separate from language, and yet part of language; and, those concepts that have an ontology that are strictly linguistic, viz., concepts like true and false. So, concepts like belief, moon, tree, etc., have an ontology that involves extra-linguistic things, but other concepts are strictly linguistic. Part of the problem is placing strictly linguistic concepts in a non-linguistic environment. I think this would be an interesting study. — Sam26

Yes, yes, and yes...

That's much what I was getting at in the world before humans example...

The mouse is in a particular state-of-mind, but it's not equivalent to our linguistic states, in particular, our beliefs as statements. So, the mouse is not believing that there is a mouse behind the tree, as you and I might believe. How could it do that without a linguistic framework to work with. It has no concept tree and mouse. If it did, well, maybe we could also infer the concepts true and false to the mouse also. You seem to be imposing linguistic concepts where there are none. — Sam26

That's the question, right?

How could a language less creature believe that a mouse is behind a tree if it has no linguistic concepts?

When I refer to beliefs (pre-linguistic beliefs in animals or humans), it's completely devoid of any conceptual framework for them, but not for us, as linguistic users. So, it seems that the tendency is to impose our conceptual framework onto them.

Indeed, it is. It is also quite common to conflate our reports of another creature's belief with the other creature's belief. I do not do that. Our report consists of propositional content. A language less creatures' belief cannot.

Saying that talk about true and false amounts to talk about what people believe, is not the same as saying that all belief "amounts to an attitude towards a proposition which represents that belief." — Sam26

Ah, my mistake. That's very true. This is more interesting.

As you know, I do believe, along with you, that beliefs in themselves, are not necessarily linguistic. For example, if we are referring to beliefs that dogs have, those beliefs are only true and false for us, not for them. They have no concepts of true and false, their beliefs are completely devoid of propositional content

If we're saying that a dog's belief can be true, we're not necessarily saying that the dog is aware of that. The dog has no language. We agree there. The dog has never used "true" or "false". We agree there. The dog's belief is completely devoid of propositional content. We agree there. Our account of the dog's belief consists of propositional content. I strongly suspect we agree there as well.

My post prior to this one begins to address how true and false belief could exist in their entirety prior to the concepts of "true" and "false". I'm curious to get your take on that. I see that you have in the meantime while I was writing this...

I don't see how you can have true and false apart from propositional content... — Sam26

Imagine the world before humans...

In this world before humans, if it is possible for a mouse to be behind a tree, and it is possible for a language less creature to believe that a mouse is behind a tree, then it is possible for a language less creature to have true belief(assuming the mouse is behind the tree) and/or false belief(assuming the mouse is not).

Okay. That's the conventional view when it comes to belief as propositional attitude. I agree that propositional content is necessarily linguistic, but I see no reason to agree that all our belief amounts to an attitude towards a proposition which represents that belief such that we take the proposition to be true.

For example, if one believes that a sheet is a sheep(a common cottage industry Gettier example), they do not have an attitude towards the proposition "a sheet is a sheep" such that they take it to be true, but they most certainly believe that that sheet is a sheep.

Maybe.

I just think that talking about truth and talking about belief are quite distinct in their focus. There is also a possible unspoken presupposition and/or implication that I'm curious about.

Is your position such that there is no such thing as true belief beyond people and their linguistic forms of life?

Do you deny and/or reject language less true/false belief?

When we talk about truth, we are talking about what people believe, or what they believe to be true. — Sam26

What are we doing when we talk about belief if not referring to what people believe(to be true)? — creativesoul

I'm not sure if it's an equivocation of "true" or a way to show that both correspondence and coherence are exhausted. The latter would be very unique.

...no precedent for taking legal action against a former president. — Merkwurdichliebe

There will be.

If having no precedent were ground for taking no action, there would never be any precedent for anything at all.

When we talk about truth, we're referring to what people believe. — Sam26

That surprises me coming from you.

What are we doing when we talk about belief if not referring to what people believe?

Seems to me that people can believe things that are not true and/or clearly and demonstrably false. Truth cannot be not true and/or demonstrably false. What people believe can. Thus, truth is not equivalent to what people believe.

There is an aura of absurdity when crybabies moan and shout about reverse racism or reverse sexism (against white people and men, respectively). — _db

Taking pride in the negative effects/affects that racism can have upon another, regardless of their race, is rather racist in and of itself...