My claim is only that a) truth and falsity are properties of truth-bearers, that b) truth-bearers are propositions, sentences, utterances, beliefs, etc., and that c) propositions, sentences, utterances, beliefs, etc. are not language-independent. This then entails that d) a world without language is a world without truth-bearers is a world without truths and falsehoods.
It's unclear to me which of a), b), c) , or d) you disagree with.
If you accept a), b), and c) but reject d) then you are clearly equivocating, introducing some new meaning to the terms "truth" and "falsehood" distinct from that referenced in a). — Michael
How do you know that a duck is not a social construction? — Leontiskos
In my opinion this is a highly controversial claim. I’d say that when a child points to the fire and says, “Fire!,” she is not saying, “This counts as fire,” but rather, “This is fire.” Or rather, whatever she is doing is much closer to the latter than the former. — Leontiskos
For me the conceptual priority question is something like this. Suppose you are training a novice in the CIA to root out foreign spies. Are you going to teach them what counts as a spy? Or are you going to teach them how to identify a spy? I think they are quite different. And if—contrary to natural language use—all we mean by “counting as” is “correctly identifying,” then we are really talking about identifying spies. — Leontiskos
At this stage I’m primarily interested in whether you only mean “counting as” as “identifying” or “correctly identifying.” — Leontiskos
“If we define a triangle as thus-and-such, then it counts as a triangle. If we define it in a different way then it may not.” — Leontiskos
is that counting as a duck is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a duck — fdrake
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