Rudimentary thought and belief are formed by virtue of the attribution/recognition of both causality and meaning. All attribution/recognition of causality is sufficient for simple thought and belief formation. All meaningful attribution involves something to become symbol and something to be become symbolized. Any mental correlation between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or the creature itself will do here.

When mental correlations are drawn between different things; when creatures associate between different things; when physiological sensory perception autonomously fuses innate feelings with ongoing events, it does so by virtue of drawing correlations between all or some of the particular external 'objects' within the events themselves and the emotional state of mind of that creature at that time. When creatures are drawing such simple mental correlations and you are watching it all happen, you're witnessing rudimentary thought and belief formation in process.

I've boldly asserted that everything ever thought, believed, spoken, and/or written consists of and is therefore existentially dependent upon physiological sensory perception, spatiotemporal distinction, and the attribution/recognition of both - causality and meaning. I've further asserted that none of these are existentially dependent upon humans. There's a burden that deserves to be carried here. These things need argued for.

The first is rather uncontentious, but I want to to be clear here. Do not confuse physiological sensory perception with complex historical notions of 'perception' that include a complex thought and belief system replete with language that it is informed by. I'm not talking about that. It is rather, that which includes any and all biological structures replete with basic physiological sensory apparati. We would all agree that things like venus flytraps have some basic kind of physiological sensory perception, as do bacteria and viruses. Plants have even been shown to detect sunlight and water, and have measurably different growth responses to different auditory stimuli despite not having an auditory faculty. This is basic physiological sensory perception, and it is common to all thinking/believing creatures. Humans are commonly said to possess vision, hearing, tactile, olfactory, and taste. A means of detection/perception seems to be necessary - but insufficient - for thought and belief. All obvious and known examples are of creatures replete with this capability, albeit on various and differing levels of complexity.

Spatiotemporal distinction is a bit more complex. However, it is actually exhausted by the attribution/recognition of causality and meaning for the latter necessarily presupposes the former. All thought and belief must be meaningful to the thinking/believing creature. All meaning is attributed. Current convention places all theories of meaning into two groups, both of which presuppose symbolism. Working from that, we can say that all meaning is attributed by virtue of a creature capable of drawing a mental correlation, association, and/or connection between different 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or itself. Any and all creatures that successfully 'perform' this mental task have actively formed rudimentary thought and belief.

These mental ongoings require neither, the creature's own awareness that they themselves are forming/remembering meaningful thought and belief, nor that we become aware of them. They only require the ability to attribute/recognize causality and/or meaning.

these are justifications, not theoriesnof truth. — Banno

Yeah, in a way. We justify our claims by virtue of using those three(and other) notions as a means to convince others to assent/agree with what we're saying... if that's what you mean.

And yet we have three main concepts of "truth"... Coherence, Correspondence, and Pragmatism.

That truth is an unanalyzable concept.

If you attempt to present a definition, you assume your audience already understands what truth is because it's an aspect of the act of assertion.

It's too basic to communication to define. — frank

Double yup. For the reason I've just put forth...

...truth doesn't involve all these other metaphysical commitments and ought not be involved in explanations of meaning because it serves no explanatory function.
— MindForged

Right, but how does that work? — Marchesk

By virtue of truth being necessarily presupposed in all meaningful thought, belief, and statements thereof...

We have arrived at a point where a bit of summarizing seems needed. There is no argument that humans have rather complex thought and belief systems. There is also no argument than rudimentary thought and belief cannot possibly meet a complex criterion. So, it seems necessary for a couple of reasons to be able to parse out all complex thought and belief in the same terms that successfully parses the simple.

The first reason would be to maintain consistency/coherency while avoiding equivocation. It would be rather unintelligible if not all thought and belief had the same basic elemental constituents, and yet I insisted upon calling them all by the same namesake. I mean, all thought and belief must have something or other in common in order to qualify as more than just a language game akin to Witt's notion of game where the only thing all games have in common is that we call them such. Thought and belief are no such thing.

Games are inventions of humans. Thought and belief are not. The only commonality relevant here is that they are both existentially dependent upon humans. The remarkable difference is that games are created/invented by us, whereas human thought and belief is discovered. Games are existentially dependent upon both, our awareness of them and our existence, whereas rudimentary thought and belief is only existentially dependent upon our existence.

I also do not want to posit a bunch of what has been historically referred to as 'mental furniture'. Rather, if this is to have any bite, it must be able to effectively exhaust all those archaic notions. It must be able to provide a very basic level, upon which everything ever thought, believed, written, and/or spoken could arise from. It ought be amenable to many a conventional viewpoint, and even those which disagree with it ought be able to be effectively explained and thus exhausted by virtue of employing it. These are tremendous justificatory burdens. The method and language is crucial.

The terms used to parse out all thought and belief(simple through the most complex) must be talking about that which is not existentially dependent our awareness, but is adequate for providing a basic outline capable of exhausting the complex as well as the simple. In the OP the second group of things that exist in their entirety, things that we discover, includes this basic outline of what all thought and belief have in common. At their fundamental core level of irreducibility, everything ever thought, believed, spoken, and/or written consists of and is therefore existentially dependent upon physiological sensory perception, spatiotemporal distinction, and the attribution/recognition of both, causality and meaning.

I want to be perfectly clear here.

Those three things are not existentially dependent upon humans in any way whatsoever. That is, all human thought and belief consists of these. We can establish these things are happening with other creatures too. Given that we already know that we were not the first creatures on the planet with the biological make-up required to accomodate these things, it only follows that they are not existentially dependent upon us in any way whatsoever. Our own thought and belief is most certainly existentially dependent upon us. The mechanisms for how it arises within us are not. Those are the basic mechanisms of all thought and belief. All thought and belief consists in/of these things. The differences arise in levels of complexity. The basics remain unchanged.

Rudimentary human thought and belief is already happening long before we are able to carefully consider it by virtue of identifying it and then isolating it for the purposes of further consideration. To do this, we use language and the terms "thought", "belief", and what have you. I'm talking about all rudimentary level mental ongoings. Call them what you wish, as long as they meet the criterion I'm setting out. The point I'm raising here is that thinking about one's own mental ongoings(metacognition) requires a creature with a common and rather complex written language.

Thinking about one's own mental ongoings is required in order to acquire knowledge of them. Thus, language is required in order to acquire knowledge of our own rudimentary thought and belief. It is not required for the existence thereof. Whatever rudimentary thought and belief consists of, it is not language. It is existentially dependent upon neither our awareness of it, nor our means for becoming so. We can know that much for certain.

Existential dependency.

What must already be the case, or what must be happening, or what must have already happened in order for some thing or other(we can always pick a candidate) to exist?

The answer to this is only discovered by knowing what makes our candidate what it is.

What makes an apple pie what it is? It's elemental constituents.

What must be the case in order for apple pies to emerge onto the world stage? More than that.

There's more to existential dependency than just basic elemental constituency.

Existence does not require being taken account of. Identity does.

If there were no taking account there would be no identification happening. If there is no identification happening there is no identity. Identity is a result of being taken account of.

One finger cannot point at itself.

There's yet another way to look at this...

Every example of identity includes something to be thought of and something else to think about that. Identity without the process of identification is nonsense... literally sense-less.

The deflationary theory holds that truth is not a predicate. — Banno

And yet "is true" is. So, "is true" is not equivalent to truth.

So if your argument is that somehow deflation requires correspondence... — Banno

Language requires correspondence. Deflation requires language. Deflation requires correspondence.

The deflationary account has issues, but the OP here doesn't talk about them. I've mentioned a few already.

So if your argument is that somehow deflation requires correspondence... — Banno

It seems to me that the T-sentence puts correspondence on display, better than any other way I can see.

Ok, so what is it in the world that makes "the bishop always stays on the same colour square" true? What in the world makes "twice two is four" true? What make "I am Banno" true?

This to show that correspondence, despite it being intuitive, itself requires considerable finessing. — Banno

Fully grasping how correspondence 'fits into' all the different sensible language use is difficult, at best.

The statement about the bishop is true because it corresponds to the rules which determine how a bishop moves. Those rules are part of the world.

The math statement is true for the same reasons.

The claim about your namesake is true because it corresponds to the name you've chosen for yourself, here on this forum.

Since you are the one evaluating the validity of the objection, you can this way safeguard yourself against any form of criticism by simply ignoring anything that could be an objection. Which is what you are doing right now — Akanthinos

Put what you deem to be a valid objection or argument forth. We'll go over it. Let the chips fall where they may.

Not interested. Valid objection against the argument I've presented or a valid argument for your position. Nothing else will suffice.

Your last few posts seem misguided. You argue as if truth is existentially dependent upon language. It's most certainly not. While I would readily agree that the truth of belief statements most certainly is, not all belief is equivalent to a belief statement. Non-linguistic belief can be true/false. If true belief is not existentially dependent upon language, than neither is truth, lest the result is incoherence, self-contradiction, and/or nonsense.


Solipsism is a thought experiment. It is a metacognitive endeavor. It is thinking about one's own thought and belief(metacognition). Metacognition is existentially dependent upon written language. It only follows that solipsism is existentially dependent upon written language. Written language is existentially dependent upon shared meaning. Solipsism is existentially dependent upon shared meaning. Shared meaning is existentially contingent upon a plurality of minds. Solipsism is existentially dependent upon a plurality of minds. Solipsism is a fool's game based upon a gross misunderstanding of thought and belief and how they work.

BIV is the same kind of endeavor working fro the same gross misunderstanding.

Where there has never been language, there has never been the "law of identity"...

If you disagree... be my guest. I've nothing further. I've offered an argument. It hasn't been validly objected to. You've offered only gratuitous assertions.

That won't do with me.

Problems will certainly arise from conflating verification with truth.
— creativesoul

Right because a BIV can verify that a cat is on the mat, while wrongly believing this means there is an external world cat on a mat. — Marchesk

You lost me here...

If you already believe the statement, then adding "is true" adds nothing meaningful to it.
— creativesoul

But I don't believe that there is life on Mars or that Julius Caesar had that number of hairs on his head. I don't disbelieve it either, because I just don't know, although my number is unlikely to be the correct one. — Marchesk

So you do not believe them. Is that a problem aside from irrelevancy? The conversation is about belief statements.

...problems arose for our naive view of things such as truth just being a matter of checking to see whether the cat is on the mat. — Marchesk

Problems will certainly arise from conflating verification with truth.

I see what you're saying, but let's take this statement:

Julius Caesar had 46,873 hairs on his head when he breathed his last breath.

Now I don't believe that, but it could be true, if he did actually have that exact number of individual hairs when he died. I have no idea how many he had, but I read that he was balding, and the average number for a full head of hair ranges from 100 to 150 thousand. So maybe 46 thousand is somewhere in the ballpark.

Let's take another one:

Life exists in some form on Mars.

That statement is true or false, but we don't know which it is, so we can't say it's true. Adding is true would mean we had some reason for thinking there is actually life on Mars. — Marchesk

We can say that it's true regardless of whether or not it is, and regardless of whether or not we already know.

If you already believe the statement, then adding "is true" adds nothing meaningful to it.

"A is identical to A" is a customary linguistic practice. We partake in this practice by virtue of positing an undefined entity in two separate instances - all the while for the sole means of drawing an equivalence between them. It's an equivalence expression. It's not meant to say anything else. This is perfectly acceptable when we're talking about the linguistic tool often referred to as the 'law' of identity.

The problem is that - all by itself - "A=A" is utterly meaningless at best and nonsensical at worst. Laws cannot be either. Thus, it behooves us all to acknowledge the brute fact that the law of identity is more than the mere expression "A=A".

The law of identity is a metacognitive tool that when used properly facilitates clear, meaningful, intelligible, and coherent language use. Metacognitive tools are existentially dependent upon language itself, for there can be no thinking about thought and belief if there is not already something to be isolated, named, and subsequently talked about. Thinking about thought and belief is an activity that is existentially dependent upon something to think about(pre-existing thought and belief).

Brute fact: The law of identity owes it's very existence to language.

p1.Whatever does not owe it's existence to language cannot... owe it's existence to language.

The law of identity does.

Not all relations do.

It only follows that not all relations are existentially dependent upon the law of identity. So, with that in mind I want to revisit the following claim...

A is identical to A, thats the basis for the determination of all further relations, no? — Akanthinos

No.

One can attribute/recognize causality long before language acquisition. The fire example...

No. Relations are 'between' different things.

What does the law of identity have to do with this? I see nothing and could effectively argue that point if you'd like.

The snow is white is true if, and only if, the snow is white. This shows that is true adds the additional meaning to a sentence that there is a linkage to something that makes the sentence true. — Marchesk

I actually reject this account. Here's why...

Adding "is true" to a belief statement adds no additional meaning. That is because all belief presupposes it's own truth, belief statements notwithstanding. That is precisely what makes "is true" a redundant use of language, because it adds no further meaning to a belief statement. To believe a statement is to believe that it is true.



What's below is metacognition at work. It is thinking about thought and belief(specifically the truth conditions for a statement thereof).

"The cat is on the mat" is true if, and only if, the cat is on the mat.

On the left of "is true if, and only if" is the meaningful claim. On the right is what must be the case in order for the claim to correspond to fact/reality. The "is true if, and only if" part in the above merely 'paves the way' for the truth conditions that follow. If, and only if, those conditions 'obtain', the statement is true.

I dont see why, a priori, identity couldnt be considered a relation. A is identical to A, thats the basis for the determination of all further relations, no?

The solution to the ontological question is simply to considerna object and its attributes and relations to be correlated, and not coconstitutives. — Akanthinos

I'm not sure what the above has to do with what I claimed. I objected to saying that differences constitute relations.

I'm not sure I would put it like that. Truth is correspondence between meaningful claims and the world. Well, let me re-phrase this... to be perfectly clear truth is correspondence 'between' thought/belief and fact/reality(the world; the way things were and/or are; the case at hand; events; happenings; the universe; etc.)

You see, the blatant ignorance here is had by assuming that there is no way to possibly measure intelligence. And yet who would argue that a slug is as intelligent as a cat, or that there's no way to effectively determine any difference, and more importantly on precisely what basis would one argue such things?

Logical argument alone?

No, of course not, that's ludicrous. We watch cats learn, problem solve, etc. just like we can watch slugs detect and react. We can develop a standardized test for cats which shows their ability to figure all sorts of things out. Not all cats will perform equally.

You see, while it may be true that IQ tests certainly show who's good at taking them, if they are created in such a way that only people who have certain kinds of cognitive abilities are able to score well on them, then by virtue of doing well on an IQ test one shows a rare and 'heightened' intelligence level. The greater the level of cognitive ability, the greater the potential. That's what it's about.

Sure, all people have potential. Not all people have the same level of potential.

Quantification is over-rated, and some people use things in suspect ways fr suspect reasons. However, effectively ascertaining the potential of people does not necessarily have to be for nefarious reasons. Rather, if the right sorts of people had the right kinds of power, the IQ test could be used to help everyone be successful. Unfortunately, I do not find that the right sorts of people have the right sorts of power, but that does not make IQ tests horrible in and of themselves. Nor does it make them based upon some fallacy...

...when I recognise intelligent behaviour, what are the intentional conscious activities I engage in to determine the extent, dimensions or quantity of intelligence? — jkg20

Well, hopefully you would have some standard of measure in place. Preferably one arising from extensive observation and comparative analysis of what are undoubtedly very intelligent people performing complex mental tasks and precisely what successfully performing those tasks requires. Namely, the sorts of cognitive abilities, mental functioning, abstract and spatial reasoning skills, along with all sorts of different problem solving skills required to successfully perform certain mental tasks...

I think so as well. Saying the cat is on the mat involves meaning about cats and mats and what it is for that statement to be true or false, and why we would think so, but also how we can get it wrong. — Marchesk

Placing a sharper point on it...

Saying "the cat is on the mat" involves meaning between "cats" and cats, "mats" and mats, and the phrase "on the" with what is otherwise a non-linguistic spatial relation between the cat and the mat. The mental connections(associations, correlations, etc.) drawn between these things are precisely what makes the statement meaningful. If, and only if, the meaningful statement corresponds to reality; fact; the way things are; the unfolding events; etc; then it is true.

The T-sentence shows this rather nicely... although it's not meant to do so. It does nonetheless. On the left is the meaningful claim and on the right is what must be the case in order for the claim to be true(in order for it to correspond to fact/reality).

"Is true" is all about belief, not truth. Again, assuming sincerity. "Is true" is insufficient for truth. Adding "is true" to a belief statement does not make it true. It also does not make it believed by the speaker. One can brazenly add "is true" to anything they say as a means to convince another that the claim is true, or to convince another that the speaker does believe it. That can be the case - and certainly is at times - even if and when the speaker does not believe that it is. So...

In the bigger picture, I am quite confident in saying that truth, meaning, thought, and belief are all irrevocably entwined. The fundamental error is getting thought and belief wrong. Thought and belief is the origen of truth and meaning. Both arise from within rudimentary(pre-linguistic) thought and belief formation. That's for another thread, but it's worth mention here...

It seems to me that there's an underlying conflation in the deflationary account between truth and meaning. Redundancy is all about meaning, not truth.

The problems with the deflationary theory, assuming the account in the OP is accurate, start with a non-sequitur. While adding "is true" to a statement adds nothing to it's meaning, that's because truth is presupposed within all thought and belief, and all statements are statements thereof(assuming sincerity). So, the non-sequitur would be the claim that truth is redundant as a result of "is true" being so. It's a non-sequitur because "is true" is not equivalent to truth. It does not follow that truth is redundant. Rather, it follows that "is true" is redundant.

One could argue that once the parts cease being the parts of a particular whole, they are no longer the same objects they used to be; they stopped existing when the whole they composed stopped existing. That's because their relations to other objects have changed, and when an object's relations change, its identity changes too. — litewave

That's just not true. Take an apple out of an apple pie:It's still an apple despite it's no longer being a part of an apple pie. The apple pie is still an apple pie as well.

An object's identity is inseparable from how the object is different from other objects and these differences constitute the relations of the object to other objects.

No. Differences do not constitute relations. To quite the contrary, relations are existentially dependent upon different things.

To what extent can one reduce the 'essence' of an object to that of its fundamental parts? — rachMiel

I don't like the historical notion of essence. I like talking in terms of existential dependency. One can reduce something(not necessarily an object) by virtue of looking at what all those somethings have in common with one another, as a means for gleaning knowledge about the things themselves that is not at all obvious otherwise...

One key...

The fundamental parts must exist in their entirety even when they are not in the combination of the thing being reduced.

There's this idea of 'wearing a different hat'...

So, it's basically the idea that the same person acts differently in different situations. This revolves around ethics. That is to say that how one acts in some situation or other, assuming the person has some notion of appropriate behaviour, ought be situation specific. We decide what counts as acceptable/unacceptable behaviour in different situations, and we hold others to that standard. I mean, we all know that some of what we do in our own homes, we would not do in public. In school, there are codes of conduct. At work, at the movies, in the theatre, in a restaurant, etc; all these places have slightly different codes of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. So, we have different criteria and thus differing expectations for behaviour depending upon the situation we're in...

That's the groundwork. I want to tie this into the conversation here...

If it is the case that someone strongly believes that they must consciously alter their behavior as a means to conform to what they believe is expected, this could set up a situation that fulfills - I think - some of the notions expressed in this thread regarding a case of lying to oneself, and/or deceiving oneself.

When one acts in ways that satisfy what one thinks that others expect, and they do this intentionally and deliberately, then they think that that's how they ought act. If those ways include saying things that they do not believe, but rather they say them because they think that it's the best thing to say at the time because of the situation they're in, then we have everything needed for one to lose sight of what they actually believe...

Now, I am not saying that this must be the case or always is the case when one 'wears different hats', but rather that it has what it takes for one to lose sight of oneself, over a significant enough period of time.