(And again, that is what creativesoul misses in his account.) — Banno

I do not completely agree with Davidson or Witt. There are important differences at a fundamental level between their views and my own. My and your view differ in much the same respect, I think. Yours is more in line with theirs, whereas I disagree with all three of you on some basic tenets. It could be summed up with "truth and meaning are both prior to language".

:wink:

We just are never going to get the kind of precision out of language that some philosophers want. It's like an itch that won't go away. — Sam26

I may or may not be one of those philosophers, but I do think common language is capable of being precise enough. Language can be honed.

For example, the terms/adjectives "linguistic" "non-linguistic" and "pre-linguistic" have been employed in this discussion by a variety of different individuals. Those uses were mainly talking about kinds of facts or something like that. For different reasons in the past, I used them myself, because they seemed like a commonsense easily understood distinction. I wanted to draw and maintain a meaningful distinction between language less creatures' belief and language users' belief. Naturally, I saw the difference to be language. So, I began by saying that language less animals have non-linguistic(or pre-linguistic) belief and language users have linguistic belief. Seems fairly straight forward. Makes perfect sense. I later found that that particular simplicity, which I always strive for, was deceptively so.

Turns out that that was a very useful distinction for me, but not for the reasons I initially began using it. I wanted to clearly demarcate two categories of belief as mentioned heretofore. I called them "linguistic belief", which was meant to pick out all belief that is existentially dependent upon language, and "pre-linguistic" or "non-linguistic" belief, which was meant to pick out all belief that was not existentially dependent upon language. Seems all well and good right up to the point when we want to set out cat's belief about bowls in terms of the content of the belief.

A non-linguistic belief cannot be existentially dependent upon language. If a bowl is existentially dependent upon language(and they are) and the content of the cat's belief includes the bowl(and it does) then that particular belief is existentially dependent upon language, and there's no way around it. All belief about bowls is existentially dependent upon bowls. Even illusions of bowls are not possible without bowls. So, I had arrived at incoherence and/or self-contradiction without being guilty of equivocating terms. This forced me to re-evaluate my position and what I was aiming to take proper account of. I want to offer a notion of belief that is philosophically and scientifically respectable. Such a notion ought be able to sensibly bridge the gap between language less belief and the belief of language users in a way that belief as propositional content has been found sorely lacking.

I had - and remain to have - no doubt whatsoever that some language less creatures have belief, but realized that we could not make sense of those sorts of belief by using the terms "linguistic" and "pre-linguistic" if I wanted to also hold that non-linguistic belief cannot be existentially dependent upon language. Some language less creatures' belief includes content that is itself existentially dependent upon language. Believing that a mouse is under the stove for example includes the stove. This makes perfect sense given that the overlap between their world and ours includes things that we created via language use; some of which are perfectly capable of being directly perceived by language less creatures and thus could be sensibly said to be part of the content of their belief.

So, I had no choice but to abandon the idea that a language less creature's belief could not be existentially dependent upon language, because some of them clearly are. This line of thought led me to realization that the difference between language less belief and the belief of language users could not be properly set out by using such terms. While language use is the difference, it was not whether or not the content of the belief was existentially dependent upon language use that determined the difference between language less creatures' belief and language users'. Rather, it was whether or not the content included language use.

Thus, we can make sense of the cat's belief that a mouse is behind the tree, or that a mouse is under the sofa, or that the food bowl is empty, or that a duck is under the car because none of those beliefs have language use as content. The correlations being drawn do not include language use. However, my cat also has some belief that includes language use as content, not because she asks, "you want some treats?" each and every time in the same tone prior to giving her treats, but because I do, and she has come to believe that she is about to get treats when I say that as a result of drawing correlations between my language use and what happens afterwards. She has attributed meaning to the language use by virtue of drawing correlations between it and eating treats. This points towards language acquisition and what it takes to go from language less creature to language user.

Now, if we go back to my granddaughter, we can also sensibly say that she believed stuff was in the fridge, and her belief was true because stuff was in the fridge. So, when she heard someone say otherwise, she knew that the claim was false on it's face, because she knew what was being claimed(she knew what it meant) and she had true belief to the contrary. The claim made no sense to her! Her belief included correlations between language use(which is directly perceptible, but includes things that are not - meaning) and other directly perceptible things like the fridge and its contents.

I'm not convinced there is a coherent account of belief that doesn't rely on knowledge as a separate category... — Srap Tasmaner

Are there beliefs that do not rely upon accounts(language use)?

I was just pointing out that the absurdity of carving initials on a perception, which creative was attempting to use against what I had said, is inapt since the whole experience: carving, initials, tree and all the rest are all of the same perceptual fabric. — Janus

Not necessarily use against what you said so much as attempting to makes sense of how the 'actual world' posited earlier fit into the carving. You've also said that we don't see the world, but rather our perceptions, conceptions, impressions, and things of a nature which sound like a denial of direct perception.

Here though, you've posited the tree, and not your conception or perception of the tree, so at least the tree is included. I've little interest in nailing down flaws in people's positions for the sake of exposing them alone, so I'm not going to push on this or make any charges. My replies are more for my own understanding.

Your asking me to explain your own terminology — Banno

That's a common scenario around here.

I think the problem lies in the vagaries of language, and trying to fit language into a very precise medium, like mathematical logic. Logic is a guide for our reasoning, but it has it's limits. The two mediums of logic and ordinary language are very different, and it's this difference that may contribute to the problem. — Sam26

I would agree.

Are you carving your initials into a tree or your perception, conception, and/or impressions?

The problem for some is that this one in particular injured political symbols and tribal pride rather than the homes and businesses of ordinary citizens — NOS4A2

The problem for others is conspiracy to defraud the US, seditious conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, amongst others....

I’ll just say I wouldn’t put it past them. — NOS4A2

Would not put it past 'them' to steal an election...

Right.

Especially given how they had replaced as many of the decision makers as they possibly could before and after election day in all the right places to be able to steal it! There has been first hand testimony setting out the plan on Jan 6 to steal the election. I mean, some of these replacements even lost all the phone records leading up to and through Jan 6 somehow, despite being in charge of the institution that specializes in exactly how to recover such information. Certainly looks like that's exactly what they were planning to do, and they were making concerted efforts to cover their tracks all the while.

:smirk:

Given the strict chain of custody standards concerning the information itself, it can be known if anything is still missing. If that ends up being the case, and the missing information is important enough, given the way the Mar-A-Lago events unfolded, I would think that there will be more searches to come. Rumor has it that there are still some records missing.

Another important bit...

An unusual number of agents and informants have been killed and/or turned up missing since Trump left office. If the seized or missing information pertains directly to any of that, Trump will be in so much more hot water than he already is.

America first!

our everyday language is insufficient. — Sam26

Sam, do you think our everyday language is insufficient for explaining the Liar and/or all its permutations?

...we never perceive the world at all, but just images of the objects we understand to constitute it... — Janus

If that were the case, then there would be no substantive difference between illusions of trees and perception of trees.

The whole world? What does it look like? — Janus

Looks a lot like a cool marble from a vantage point far enough away in space. We have pictures. I'm surprised you haven't seen one. Maybe you've forgot? Up close it looks like trees and mice and stuff. We have pictures of that too. Pretty unremarkable really when you think about it.

I insist that what you call prelinguistic truths or beliefs can be put into propositional form. But I'm tiered of that argument, and hope we might leave it as moot. — Banno

I agree that language less belief can be put into propositional form. That's how we present it to one another. Our ability to render language less belief into propositional form says nothing about the meaningful content of the language less belief aside from it is part of our shared world(clearly a plus), and thus we can talk about it. Trees and mice and spatiotemporal relationships are part of the world we share with Jack and Cookie, as are food bowls and food.

No problems with privacy or mental anything.

How else can you know that the one is not the other if not by performing a comparison/contrast between the two purportedly distinct things? In order to compare the two things, you have to know what they both are. The problem, of course, is that you've defined the one in such a way as to suggest that it is impossible to know. — creativesoul

How do I know the world is not my experience? — Janus

You posited an actual world then clearly stipulated a forbidden access/purchase to/upon that actual world. You then posited your experience as another entity completely unto itself as distinct from the aforementioned 'prelinguistic actual world'. If we have no access to that world, if our words cannot gain purchase upon it, then we cannot possibly compare anything to it.

In order to know the difference between the two, we must have access to both. You've already said that we cannot. That is a problem called untenability.

...we never perceive the world... — Janus

I do.

The world is a static idea of the totality of facts, things and relations. — Janus

How can you know that if you cannot access it, if your perception and conceptions cannot have purchase on it?

Suppose we have a true sentence of the form
S is true IFF p
where S is some sentence and p gives the meaning of S.

What sort of thing is S? well, it's going to be a true proposition (here, continuing the convention adopted from the SEP article on truth of using "proposition" as a carry-all for sentence, statements, utterance, truth-bearer, or whatever one prefers).

And what sort of thing is p? Since the T-sentence is true, it is a state of affairs, a fact. — Banno

Facts give the meaning of true sentences?

I don't see the benefit in what you're doing. Maybe I do not understand.


Getting rid of the distinction between scheme and world sounds right to me, but I suspect for very different reasons than you hold. Belief consists of both external and internal elements. That cannot be made sense of if one divorces belief(scheme) from the world. Belief about trees includes trees. Divorcing the two leads to sense datum and all that sort of garbage instead of keeping us directly connected to the world.

we know that all our identifications and definitions are static abstractions derived from, filtered from so to speak, our actual experience which is an evershifting succession of images and impressions. Our experience is the territory and the model we have evolved of the world of facts and things is our map, and as the old saw goes 'the map is not the territory'.

The map is tied to the territory by long consideration, historically speaking, of human experience, and conjecture about it, and its meaning, and so forth. But we cannot discursively set the map and territory side by side so to speak to examine the connections, whether purported to be rational or in some sense merely physical, between them.

But we don't need to do that anyway, — Janus

How else can you know that the one is not the other if not by performing a comparison/contrast between the two purportedly distinct things? In order to compare the two things, you have to know what they both are. The problem, of course, is that you've defined the one in such a way as to suggest that it is impossible to know what it is.

The position reminds me of Kant's Noumena, or any other position that denies direct perception.

Earlier you said it was difficult to talk about these things. I found it to be much easier after abandoning those kinds of frameworks.

Analysis and conceptualization cannot gain purchase on that actuality... — Janus

That pulls the rug out from under our own analysis, does it not?

There is, as a kind of ground to all our propositions, truths and facts, a pre-linguistic actuality to which they must submit. Analysis and conceptualization cannot gain purchase on that actuality, because to do so is to bring it into the linguistic domain, and there all we have purchase on is our communal perceptions and conceptions of what is the case, — Janus

Submission of all our propositions to an unknowable actuality?

Too many replies, and I'm off to the hardware store. Good to see a consensus developing, even if it is "Banno is wrong..."

Now, if you folk could just agree as to where I am wrong... — Banno

This presupposes that such an agreement is not already complete in the making aside from making it outwardly known.

:wink:

From where I sit Banno, you equivocate the term "fact" by virtue of vacillating between "fact" as propositions/states of affairs/the case at hand and "fact" as true statements. You also practice rendering all belief in terms of propositional attitudes which has the inevitable logical consequence - on pains of coherency alone - of limiting the very ability to acknowledge the brute fact that some meaningful true belief exists in its entirety prior to common language. You know the drill...

Meaningful true belief exists in its entirety prior to common language creation. Either both meaning and truth emerge prior to common language or meaningful true belief exists without meaning or truth.

That's our differences in a nutshell. Aside from that...

The large bulk of what you argue for, particularly the bits involving direct perception(although you never use those terms) is in perfect accord with my own position which, I believe, dovetails nicely not only with portions of your position, but also many other philosophers with whom you agree. I also nod towards the outright rejection of anything remotely resembling a category of stuff that is totally and completely unknowable but somehow the purveyor of such an approach want to then use this completely unknown empty category of things as a measuring device. In order to know that that is not a tree in and of itself, one must know what a tree in and of itself is. Such an approach is untenable. Things like that are also rejected by us both. Hell, even the rejection of private language is shared. The rejection of the conventional view on language that Davidson was arguing against using Mrs. Malaprop and other intuition pumps(thank you professor Dennett) is also a commonality between our respective viewpoints.

The main flaw I seem to see in your view could be roughly described as placing too much of the wrong kind of value upon language use.

You also seem to want to puke at the mention of anything remotely metaphysical, which is perhaps why you cannot even set aside your own current presuppositions in order to grasp how meaningful true thought and belief exists in its entirety prior to language.

Funny that almost a decade ago you and I participated in a much better debate than our recent one:Truth is prior to language. I argued in the affirmative. My view has evolved a bit since then as has your own.

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).